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Oral Answers to Questions
(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
1. What progress has been made on improving cancer survival rates.
Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)
11. What progress has been made on improving cancer survival rates.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)
Before I answer the questions, may I start by saying that I am sure the thoughts of the whole House are with the people of Brussels today after the shocking events that they have witnessed? As the Prime Minister made clear this morning, we will do all we can to support them.
Cancer survival rates are at a record high. We are on track to save an estimated 12,000 more lives a year for people diagnosed between 2011 and 2015, but we know that we need to strive to be better. The independent cancer taskforce report, “Achieving World-Class Cancer Outcomes”, which was published last summer, recommends improvements across the cancer pathway and sets a clear ambition for further improvement of survival rates.
Andrew Stephenson
I thank my hon. Friend for that answer, and I associate myself with her comments about the terrorist outrage in Brussels.
As my hon. Friend may be aware, the Rosemere cancer foundation has been fundraising for a new chemotherapy unit at Burnley general hospital, which will be a huge boost for cancer patients in my area. Because of the huge generosity of Pendle residents, Rosemere has already raised £90,000 towards its target of £100,000. Will she join me in congratulating Rosemere on its efforts and encouraging residents to help it to meet its full target?
Jane Ellison
Absolutely. It is a delight to associate myself with my hon. Friend’s support for that excellent local group. The Rosemere cancer foundation supports world-class cancer treatment throughout Lancashire and south Cumbria. Around 4,000 chemotherapy treatments are delivered each year at Burnley general hospital, and the new unit will be of real benefit to local cancer patients from my hon. Friend’s constituency—for which, as he knows, I have great affection—and from the surrounding area.
Chris Davies
Is there anything further that my hon. Friend can do to incentivise NHS trusts to replace linear accelerators that are more than 10 years old, and thereby allow more patients to access cutting-edge radiotherapy techniques?
Jane Ellison
This, of course, is one of the areas covered by the cancer taskforce, and it is a very important matter. Cally Palmer, the NHS national cancer director and chief executive of the Royal Marsden, is leading on taskforce implementation. The replacement of LINACs is being taken into consideration in planning improvements across the pathway. That can only be done because we are putting into the NHS and into cancer treatment the money that we need to achieve those world-class outcomes.
Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)
Each year, 38,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with a blood cancer, but very few people are familiar with the term blood cancer. Patients have expressed concern about the fact that a lack of awareness has a significant impact on them throughout their patient journey, from causing confusion and uncertainty at diagnosis to making them unaware of the organisations that provide the support and care that they need. Will the Minister tell us what more the Government can do to tackle that lack of awareness in order to improve outcomes and survival rates for all patients affected by the 137 types of blood cancer?
Jane Ellison
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to draw the attention of the House to the challenge of joining up thinking across the cancer pathway. That is exactly the approach that Cally Palmer and the taskforce implementation team are looking at. I recently had a conversation with her and with NHS England representatives in which we talked about how we get that joined-up approach. That is at the heart of the taskforce’s recommendations, and we will be taking it forward for all the reasons that the hon. Lady has eloquently expressed.
Julie Cooper (Burnley) (Lab)
Cancer Research UK has said that cancer waiting targets have been missed so many times that failure has become the norm. Does the Minister agree that failure to tackle that is undoing the good work of the last 15 years on survival rates?
Jane Ellison
These days, we are dealing with the fact that a hugely greater number of people are being diagnosed. The increase in the number of people being referred by GPs is extraordinary. For example, last year GPs referred nearly half a million more patients to see a cancer specialist. That is an increase of 51%. When it comes to waiting lists, of course we want to make sure that everyone is seen. The Government have committed more money to diagnostics, for example, but we expect the NHS to look urgently at any local dips in performance and to take action to make sure that all patients get access to treatment as quickly as possible.
Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)
Will the Minister join me in welcoming the Government announcement of funding for a new radiotherapy machine in Eastbourne district general hospital, which will improve cancer survival rates for patients from Seaford, Alfriston, Polegate and East Dean in my constituency?
Jane Ellison
Absolutely. My hon. Friend again highlights where we are investing, upgrading machines and putting in money, effort, people and resources to make sure that we can achieve world-class cancer outcomes. As I say, we are on course for record outcomes in terms of patients surviving 10 years beyond a diagnosis. However, we always want to do better, so I applaud the local efforts that she has highlighted.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)
I would like to reiterate what the Minister said. As I sure my hon. Friends would agree, our thoughts go out to everybody in Brussels at this time.
Will the Minister please inform the House of what consideration has been given to bringing the bowel cancer screening age into line with that in Scotland—at 50 rather than 60—following the recent Westminster Hall debate on this subject?
Jane Ellison
We had an excellent debate. An extraordinary number of colleagues turned up in Westminster Hall, a debate of just half an hour, demonstrating how many people are interested in this important subject. I outlined in my response to the debate the fact that we have the bowel scope screening programme and the bowel cancer programme in England, which complement each other. The result, particularly of bowel scope screening, is that we can actually make a huge impact on mortality rates for people who are caught. I went into that in more detail in my response to the debate, but that is the key to making sure we identify more people and stop them dying from this dreadful disease.
Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)
2. What recent representations he has received on the effect on health budgets of the administration of deprivation of liberty safeguards.
The Minister for Community and Social Care (Alistair Burt)
I have received a range of representations on the effect of the deprivation of liberty safeguards, including on the impact that the current system has on health and care budgets. The hon. Lady is a respected voice on the challenges that these safeguards pose, and I can reassure her and the House that there is ongoing work to address those challenges.
Ann Coffey
I thank the Minister for his reply. Deprivation of liberty assessments are costing Stockport Council £1.2 million this year, as a result of the Cheshire West judgment. Not one single penny of that is providing social care. This is clearly unsustainable at a time when social care budgets are under intense pressure. Something needs to be done now; we cannot wait for the Law Commission. Will the Minister consider, as a small step forward, scrapping costly automatic annual reassessments and the necessity to reassess every time an elderly person leaves a care home to go into hospital?
Alistair Burt
I will happily look at anything that might assist us. As the hon. Lady knows, we are caught in the process of trying to deal with a court judgment and the issues surrounding mental capacity in relation to deprivation of liberty safeguards, which are genuinely serious and cannot be easily changed at the stroke of a pen, as well as the extra costs that the problem has raised. We are now close to hearing the Law Commission’s post-consultation proposals. I understand that it will publish its latest analysis in mid-May and will have drafted detailed legislation by the end of December. I will look at any suggestion of hers that might ease the situation practically.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Will the Minister confirm that when the new legislation is finally introduced, it will be simpler to understand and result in fewer bereaved relatives facing distressing delays when a loved one dies in care?
Alistair Burt
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. What has caused the confusion has been a definition of loss of liberty and dying in state detention that bears no relation to anyone’s common-sense understanding of the situation. Whatever new legislation is proposed by the Law Commission, it must meet the test of being much simpler, but it must also meet the legislative test of meaning what it says so that it does not get disrupted in the courts again.
Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)
3. If he will make it his policy to eliminate hepatitis C.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)
The UK Government take the issue of prevention, diagnosis and treatment of hepatitis very seriously. I can confirm that Public Health England and NHS England, together with key stakeholders, are continuing to develop a strategic approach to tackling hepatitis C, including plans which have now been published for treatment through operational delivery networks.
Roger Mullin
So far as I am aware, the Scottish Government provide treatment for all those with sensitive hepatitis C, including those infected with contaminated blood, and that transforms the lives of patients and reduces the risk of further infection in the population. Will the Minister commit to providing similar access to treatment in England?
Jane Ellison
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has provided guidance on the new drug, so the hon. Gentleman is right to highlight how effective the new treatments are compared with what was previously available. The NHS is in the process of rolling out its response. It has already treated a number of people, and there is a commitment to treat 10,000 people with those treatments in 2016-17. We are of course looking more widely at how we can tackle these issues, not least in the context of the tragedy of those infected with contaminated blood, which he has highlighted.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
What discussions has the Minister had with her counterpart in Northern Ireland regarding the reduction and eventual eradication of hepatitis C? Does she agree that it is important to have a strategy that encompasses the whole United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?
Jane Ellison
Absolutely. The consideration of all aspects of how we eliminate hepatitis C over time is important, but we should not underestimate what a difficult job that is, largely because an awful lot of people are not aware that they have it—they are asymptomatic and therefore much of the burden of the disease is not visible to us. However, there is always more we can do, and we continue to make this issue a priority.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
4. Whether the terms and conditions of the junior doctors contract were finalised before he took the decision to introduce that contract.
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
May I start by echoing the thoughts of my the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), for the people of Brussels, with whom we stand shoulder to shoulder?
In my statement to the House on 11 February, I gave a broad outline of the new terms for doctors and dentists in training, which were recommended as fair and reasonable by Sir David Dalton. I am still reviewing the exact terms, alongside the equality impact assessment, and finalised terms will be published shortly.
Kirsten Oswald
When the Secretary of State declared that he was imposing the contract on junior doctors last month, he claimed the support of senior NHS leaders, many of whom subsequently denied supporting his position. Given that foundation trusts are free to offer their own terms, how does he envisage enforcing that contract?
Mr Hunt
We consulted widely with NHS leaders about the terms of the new contract, and they confirmed that it was fair and reasonable. Any decision to proceed with a new contract when it is not possible to have a negotiated settlement is inevitably controversial, but we wanted to ensure that independent people thought that the terms of the contract were fair. I think we have done that, and when junior doctors see their new contracts—as they will do shortly—they will realise that we were right to say that.
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
Underlying the dispute over the junior doctors contract is a long-standing problem of morale among junior doctors, and a failure to pay enough attention to their experiences in training. I welcome the Government’s decision to launch an independent review led by Professor Dame Sue Bailey, and I ask my right hon. Friend to update the House on the progress and timing of that review.
Mr Hunt
As ever, my hon. Friend speaks with great knowledge about NHS matters, and she is right to say that some of the underlying issues have nothing to do with contractual terms but are about very big changes in the way that training has happened over recent years, in particular the loss of the firm system and the sense of camaraderie that was part of the deal for junior doctors in training. We would like to see whether we can rectify some things that have gone in the wrong direction, but we have not yet had the co-operation of the British Medical Association for that independent review, which is led by the highly respected Professor Dame Sue Bailey. I hope that the BMA will co-operate with that, because it is a big opportunity to sort out some long-standing problems.
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
There are currently 4,500 gaps for trainees in the NHS. Junior doctors often have to cover those gaps, which can mean having to do extensive extra shifts, or even covering two roles at the same time. It looks as if that situation will get worse, because fewer than half of the most junior trainees have applied for ongoing training this year. Does the Secretary of State accept that that represents a serious threat to patient safety?
Mr Hunt
The purpose of the changes is to improve patient safety, and particularly to deal with the issue that we have higher mortality rates for people who are admitted to hospital at weekends than for those admitted during the week. Because of the confrontational approach taken by the BMA, it has been difficult to negotiate an agreement, but we are committed to doing the right thing. What is right for patients is also right for doctors. We have been talking about morale, and the biggest way to dent doctors’ morale is to prevent them from giving the care that they want to give patients, so we must sort that issue out.
Dr Whitford
I suggest that what is good for doctors is also good for patients, and if people are being texted four or five times a day and asked to do a second shift to cover for a junior and a senior post at the same time, that is not good for either. On 11 February the Secretary of State said that he was imposing the contract to bring stability to the NHS, but that has not exactly gone well. What is his plan to re-establish his relationship with junior doctors and get us back out of where we are now?
Mr Hunt
With the greatest respect, we are trying to solve a problem that in Scotland is being ducked. We want a seven-day NHS with mortality rates that are no higher at weekends. There is no plan in Scotland to deliver that across the whole NHS. Rather than sniping, the hon. Lady should recognise that, in the interests of patient safety, we need to take difficult decisions. In the end, doctors will see that it is the right thing for them, too.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
First, on behalf of the Opposition, I associate ourselves with the comments made by Ministers about the tragic events in Brussels, and offer our condolences and solidarity to the people there.
Yesterday in Westminster Hall, there was a debate calling on the Health Secretary to resume meaningful contract negotiations with the BMA. The Health Secretary was not there—I do not know, but perhaps he was out buying a leaving present for the Chancellor—but if he had been, he would have heard his junior Minister confirm that, since the announced imposition, the Government have made no attempt to prevent further industrial action. They know more industrial action is coming. Do they not owe it to patients who would be inconvenienced by further strikes to get off their backsides and do something to prevent it?
Mr Hunt
The reason we made the decision to proceed with the new contracts is that we had independent advice that a negotiated settlement was not possible. On that basis, we decided that it was important to have certainty for the service by making clear what the new contract is. The contract that we decided on is one that strikes a mid-point between what the Government wanted and what the BMA asked for. It is a fair contract and a better contract for patients. The Labour party would support it if it was really on the side of patients.
David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
5. What steps the Government is taking to improve support for children and young people with mental health problems.
The Minister for Community and Social Care (Alistair Burt)
The Government are committed to delivering the vision set out in “Future in mind” and are driving forward a major system-wide transformation programme, working alongside our partners in Government and arm’s length bodies to improve access to high-quality support across the country.
David Rutley
I thank my right hon. Friend for the steps he has set out. Will he join me in congratulating the charity YoungMinds on the important work it does in highlighting the mental health challenges young people face, not least from the so-called dark net and social media. Does he agree that we must ensure that the internet is a positive and not a negative force in tackling young people’s mental health challenges?
Alistair Burt
Yes, the work that YoungMinds and a range of other partners have done and continue to do to ensure that children and young people can access information safely is commendable. Children, young people and their parents have expressed the need to access both high-quality and reliable information and support online. That was reflected in the “Future in mind” report on children’s and young people’s mental health. We are investing with MindEd and a number of groups and organisations to work on apps for young people. It is important that they have access to safe material to exclude that which is rather darker.
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister will recognise that walk-in centres run by experienced GPs can offer important support to children with mental health problems, yet popular walk-in centres that were established by local GPs in my constituency are being put out to tender, putting at risk the leadership and involvement of those experienced GPs in the centres. Will the Minister give guidance to the NHS Procurement Authority that walk-in centres should be led by local GPs with experience of that area?
Alistair Burt
I will look at what the hon. Gentleman says. As he will appreciate, I am not responsible for individual commissioning decisions. The commissioners will have full regard to the needs of the local population when they are putting those services out. It is important that access is increasingly available at GP and primary level, as well as in other areas where the Government are investing further money. I will have a look at what he says.
Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)
20. Will the Minister inform the House of what dialogue is maintained between his Department and the Department for Education to ensure that those issues are picked up and that help is signposted as early as possible?
Alistair Burt
There is a growing relationship with the Department for Education—it is better than it has ever been. For the first time, there is a Minister responsible for mental health in the Department, and there is a schools champion for mental health, whom I met the other day at a conference in Cambridge. The Departments work closely together to deliver the vision set out in “Future in mind”. For example, there is a £1 million pilot project, working across 22 schools, to find the right people in schools to deal with mental health issues. There is much greater recognition that, the earlier we pick up these things, the better it is for youngsters and their future mental health.
Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)
Eating disorders among children and teenagers cause life-threatening health problems and even death. What steps is the Minister taking to enable early detection and intervention, which result in better prognoses and support closer to home?
Alistair Burt
There are two things that can help the hon. Lady. The first is the commitment to build £30 million a year into budgets over the next five years to support those with eating disorders, about which I spoke at a conference last week. The second is the earlier detection of eating disorders. We reckon that, by 2020, 95% of urgent eating disorder cases will be seen within a week, with routine cases seen within four weeks. There is recognition of the real danger now posed by eating disorders.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
Earlier this month, school and college leaders reported a large rise in the number of students suffering from anxiety. Two thirds said that they struggle to get mental health services for their pupils, and of those who had referred a student to child and adolescent mental health services—CAMHS—most rated them as “poor” or “very poor”. Despite the Minister’s warm words, things are getting worse, not better. Will he confirm that every single penny promised to children’s mental health will reach those services and that none of this money will be used to plug the gap in hospital budgets?
Alistair Burt
Following long and frank conversations between me, the NHS and the Treasury, I can give the hon. Lady that assurance—every penny of the £1.4 billion pledged in the 2015 Budget for CAMHS and for eating disorders will be spent on children’s mental health by the end of this Parliament. It is not fair continually to say that nothing is going on. The first tranche of money—£173 million—is being spent: £75 million to the clinical commissioning groups; £30 million to tackle eating disorders; £28 million for the expansion of children’s IAPT—improving access to psychological therapies—services; £15 million for perinatal services; and £25 million to address other issues involving training. That is money already committed and it is being spent now. The problems that she mentions are a high priority and are being dealt with.
Luciana Berger
I listened carefully to the Minister, but by his own admission—in response to parliamentary questions—he is going to underspend this year by £77 million on his pledge to spend £250 million on CAMHS, and by £11 million on his £15 million pledge regarding perinatal mental health. He talks about the importance of intervening earlier. Does he agree with Labour that every child should receive personal, social, health and economic education so that young people are equipped with the resilience better to support their mental health?
Alistair Burt
We cannot have it both ways, it would seem. I have given a pledge, which the hon. Lady asked for in her first question, that the £1.4 billion committed to CAMHS will be spent by the end of this Parliament—and it will be. It is known that the first tranche has not been fully committed, but this is the first year and some money has to roll over. However, I have made absolutely sure that that money will be spent, including on perinatal services, which will reach a much better place than when we came into office, and that is very important. The work will be done. PSHE is not a matter for this Department, but I fully agree that it is important that children have such information. The pressure caused through social media, sexting and the like means that children these days need to have a very up-to-date, modern understanding of issues associated with personal health and social education, which I fully support.
Mr Speaker
May I gently point out to colleagues that, very useful and comprehensive though these exchanges have been, as usual at this stage we have got a lot to get through and we need to speed up a bit? There is a long waiting list of colleagues and we must get through that list.
Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)
6. What progress the 100,000 Genomes Project has made on providing UK leadership for international developments in precision medicine.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Life Sciences (George Freeman)
Our groundbreaking 100,000 Genomes Project, which was announced by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister as part of our 10-year life sciences strategy, represents the moonshot of medicine in making the UK the first nation on earth to sequence the entire genetic sequence of 100,000 genomes from NHS patients. Through our precision medicine strategy, the launch of 13 genomics medicine centres in the NHS, funding from Government and the precision medicine catapult, we are winning international plaudits and attracting inward investment, as a sign of our commitment to a 21st century NHS.
Maggie Throup
I recently visited the medical school in Nottingham where I saw the great work being carried out, including groundbreaking genomics work on identifying Alzheimer’s risk genes. What support is the Department providing to ensure that work is fully funded and expanded, so that the east midlands and the UK continue to be world leaders in the search for treatments and ultimately a cure for Alzheimer’s, based on our research?
George Freeman
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who had a distinguished career in the life science sector, including through setting up her own business. She is right to highlight the work at Nottingham University which, along with Leicester and Birmingham, represents something of an east midlands powerhouse. The Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust is part of the East of England NHS Genomic Medicine Centre, recruiting patients and becoming one of our hubs for NHS genomics medicine. In addition, we are actively supporting research into Alzheimer’s through our £1 billion a year National Institute for Health Research budget, the £150 million Dementia Research Institute and our dementia plan. I continue to lead conversations with dementia charities.
Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)
7. What progress the Government have made on achieving parity of esteem for physical and mental health services.
The Minister for Community and Social Care (Alistair Burt)
We remain committed to achieving parity of esteem between mental and physical health, and we are investing more than ever in mental health. We welcomed the publication of the Mental Health Taskforce report last month and will work to embed its recommendations in our policies.
Alex Chalk
Steph Cater, a 17-year-old at Pate’s Grammar School in my constituency, is concerned that mental health in-patient services are distributed unevenly, meaning that those needing treatment can end up being cared for hundreds of miles away from their families. What more can be done to ensure that those in crisis are treated closer to home?
Alistair Burt
A review of beds in 2014 partly redressed that uneven distribution. In my hon. Friend’s area, an analysis of the impact of the new beds shows that the average distance travelled to child and adolescent mental health services units in the south-west has improved from 114 miles in 2014 to 39.9 miles in 2016. It is not enough simply to provide more beds, however. We have to provide more community-based support and treatment—that is at the heart of “Future in mind”. The number of out-of-area treatments also has to be reduced.
Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)
I was delighted that Paul Farmer’s taskforce report endorsed the plan first proposed by the Secretary of State and myself in 2014 to have comprehensive maximum waiting times in mental health by 2020 so that people with mental ill health have exactly the same right to treatment on time as others. I was delighted that the Government endorsed the whole plan, but dismayed that Simon Stevens then confirmed that there was no money to implement it. How will the Minister ensure that the comprehensive waiting time standards are implemented by 2020?
Mr Speaker
If anything, questions are getting longer, not shorter. I say with great courtesy to the right hon. Gentleman, whom I hold in the highest esteem and whose track record is greatly respected across the House, that his question was far too long.
Alistair Burt
Two things: the first set of waiting time standards—the first ever by a Government—are already in place from April 2015, with 50% of people experiencing an episode of psychosis treated within two weeks and improved waiting times for talking therapies; and, secondly, we have to get the database right. The right hon. Gentleman will know that we are doing an extensive and much greater data trawl to find a base on which those waiting times can be set, but it remains our determination to get them introduced by 2020.
Mr Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
8. What improvements have been made to child and adolescent mental health services since the publication of the Government’s strategy, “Future in mind”, in March 2015.
The Minister for Community and Social Care (Alistair Burt)
Progress has been made on many of the key ambitions set out in “Future in mind”. Of greatest significance is the development of local transformation plans that cover the full spectrum of children and young people’s mental health issues, from prevention to intervention for emerging or existing mental health problems, for every clinical commissioning group in the country.
Mr Shuker
This month, the Mental Health Network, representing NHS providers, said that very little, if any, of the money promised for child and adolescent mental health has yet materialised and that some services are experiencing cuts in-year. The Minister must accept, despite his assurances to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), that the Department’s efforts in getting this money out the door has been woeful. What will he change?
Alistair Burt
I do not necessarily, despite the energy of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree, accept everything that she says. I gave a list of where the money is being spent. However, I think I can help both the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Lady. Much more is being done to ensure that CCGs deliver what they need to deliver in relation to mental health. This year’s figures will show that, whereas there has been a 3.7% uplift for CCGs, there has been an uplift of 5.4% in mental health spending. With more transparency and more determination by the NHS on CCG spending, hopefully what people are saying and feeling will become less justified in the future.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
9. How much was spent on healthcare as a proportion of GDP in (a) 2009-10 and (b) 2014-15; and what estimate he has made of the amount that will be spent on healthcare as a proportion of GDP in 2020-21.
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
Because in 2010 the country faced a deficit that constituted 11% of GDP, all major political parties committed to plans that reduced Government spending, including on health, as a proportion of GDP. However, because of this Government’s commitment to the NHS, health spending as a proportion of Government spending will increase from 14.2% to 15.8% over the decade.
Kelvin Hopkins
Former coalition Minister David Laws has recently written that under the previous Government the NHS chief executive told Ministers that the health service required an additional £30 billion, and that he was forced to cut that figure and squeeze it down to £15 billion, but was allocated only £8 billion by the Treasury. That was a savage cut of £22 billion to what the NHS really needed. Is that not the root cause of all the NHS’s problems, and does it not make utter nonsense of the Government’s claim to be protecting NHS funding?
Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
16. Does my right hon. Friend agree that as well as focusing on health inputs and how much we spend on the NHS, it is also important that we focus on health outcomes?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, which is why I am so proud that under this Conservative Government we have put 27 hospitals into special measures, 11 of which have now come out of special measures. We are improving the standard and quality of care, and increasing the number of people being treated across the board. Outputs matters, and that is what this Conservative Government will deliver.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
The Health Secretary may talk a good game on funding, but the reality in A&E departments and GP surgeries tells a very different story. The whole system is on its knees, and the revelations of the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury this weekend confirmed what everyone in the NHS already knew—making £22 billion of efficiency savings over the next four years is pure fantasy. In the interests of transparency, therefore, will he now publish the full analysis explaining how NHS England arrived at the figure of £22 billion?
Mr Hunt
Let us look at what the chief executive of NHS England, Simon Stevens, actually said, and not what he is alleged to have done, which he denies. He said that, when it came to the spending review, the Government had listened to and actively supported the NHS’s case for spending and that he could kick-start his plan for the NHS. But it is rather academic—is it not?—because Labour refused to fund his plan at all, which all goes to show, when it comes to the NHS, that Labour writes the speeches but Conservatives write the cheques.
Heidi Alexander
I did not ask the Health Secretary what the chief executive of the NHS said. I asked the right hon. Gentleman to publish the analysis behind the £22 billion figure, but he will not do so because he knows that the only way to achieve these politically motivated efficiencies is by making cuts to staff and pay. The truth is that the NHS survives on the good will of its staff, yet he has pushed that good will to breaking point. How does he expect to improve current services, let alone deliver a seven-day NHS, with fewer staff and a demoralised workforce?
Mr Hunt
Under this Government, staff levels have actually risen: we have 11,000 more doctors and 12,000 more nurses. If the hon. Lady is worried about NHS funding, perhaps she might look in the mirror, because in 2010 her party wanted to cut funding to the NHS—in Wales, it actually did cut it—and in 2015 it wanted £5.5 billion less than the Conservatives. The NHS does not need Labour rhetoric; it needs more doctors and more nurses, which we can have only on the back of the strong economy that only the Conservatives can deliver.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
10. What recent assessment he has made of staff morale in the NHS.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Ben Gummer)
The Department assesses staff morale in the NHS using engagement scores from the annual NHS staff survey. I am delighted to say that the engagement score currently runs at 3.78 out of 5, which is a rise from the position in 2012, when the survey began, when it was at 3.68.
Dr Huq
On top of the junior doctors debacle, the staff survey shows that midwives are stressed, with 90% of them working extra shifts unnecessarily. I have raised before the case of the radiographer Sharmila Chowdhury, who was sacked for exposing bribes at Ealing hospital, but has yet to get a practical response, other than the words, “Francis review”, which has yet to be implemented. When will the Government get a grip on plummeting morale in the NHS?
Ben Gummer
The hon. Lady asked a number of questions. On the specific issue about this particular member of staff, I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has met her, and I would be happy to discuss this further. The hon. Lady is wrong about the Francis recommendations, which are being implemented in full. She should look at the balanced results from the staff survey, with more staff saying that their motivation at work is going up, with the number recommending their trust as a place of work and as a place to receive treatment going up, and with the number able to contribute to improvements at work also going up. There are issues in the staff survey that we would like to address—it is unfortunate to see reports of bullying and harassment going up—but we are addressing the problem through the staff partnership forum, which I chair. Overall, however, this is a balanced and positive return from the staff survey.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend confirm that, as well as the importance of staff morale, we should note that in hospitals where seven-day working has been implemented, patient morale is also improving considerably?
Ben Gummer
My hon. Friend is right, and the returns from the friends and family tests across the country show increasing patient satisfaction with the NHS.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
22. How does the Minister think that staff morale is affected when people hear the Government’s constant refrain of “implementing seven-day working”, particularly among pathology staff and others who have for decades provided a 24/7 service?
Ben Gummer
Despite the best efforts of Labour Members, staff morale has gone up over the past few years. The situation is not helped when the nature of the junior doctors contract is misrepresented, as it continually is by Labour Members. If they were to give a fair account of the contract to their constituents, I am sure we would see further improvements in staff morale in years to come.
Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)
Staff morale at Uckfield community hospital is exceptionally high, partly owing to its receiving 100% in a recent friends and family survey. Will the Minister join me in congratulating all the nurses, volunteers and front-office staff in Uckfield community hospital?
Ben Gummer
I happily congratulate the staff at my hon. Friend’s local hospital. This shows where good constituency representation, reinforcing the efforts of local people working in local hospitals, can produce improvements in staff morale and therefore in the experience of patients, which is something from which Labour Members would do well to learn.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
In a recent survey, 70% of GPs warned that their workloads were becoming unmanageable, and 55% said that the quality of the service they provided had deteriorated, with too few patients getting appointments, treatment and the range of services needed. We now hear reports of a large decrease in applications for GP training places, and this is one of the last cohorts to be fully trained by 2020. Unless the Minister takes urgent action to address these issues affecting GP morale, workload and recruitment, patient care will just get worse. What is he going to do about it?
Ben Gummer
The hon. Lady raises the issue of GPs. We are ensuring that there will be 5,000 additional GPs by the end of this Parliament, which addresses precisely the issues that she raises.
Ben Gummer
I do not know why the hon. Lady is shaking her head. She asked what I am doing, and 5,000 additional GPs will help to solve her problem. Secondly, we are putting a greater proportion of funding into general practice, by comparison with the proportion of the NHS budget as a whole, than any previous Government. Thirdly, we are increasing the number of GP training places. I am pleased to report that we are doing well in ensuring that more people in training positions are choosing to become general practitioners.
John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)
12. What progress his Department has made on improving the performance of hospitals in special measures.
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
Trusts put into special measures have recruited 1,363 more doctors and 4,190 more nurses, with one estimate saying that this has reduced mortality rates by up to 450 a year.
John Stevenson
In the past six years, the North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust has had four chief executives, an acquisition that is going nowhere and a so-called success regime that is reporting later than intended. There are clearly tough decisions to be made in the north Cumbria health economy, and the sooner they are made, the better. Will the Secretary of State undertake to ensure that the recommendations of the success regime are implemented in full and in a timely manner?
Mr Hunt
I thank my hon. Friend for his persistent campaigning on behalf of his local trust. He is right that there are big issues there. He is also right generally that the NHS has too rapid a turnover of chief executives. There is a new one, Stephen Eames, who is one of the top-rate NHS chief executives. The Care Quality Commission says that things are improving and mortality rates are going down. I will support my hon. Friend in every way I can to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
As the Manor hospital is in special measures, Walsall mothers-to-be are being denied the right to choose to have their babies at that hospital. Will the Secretary of State confirm that there are safe staffing levels at the Manor and at other hospitals?
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
13. What recent representations he has received on the future funding of mesothelioma research.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Life Sciences (George Freeman)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this issue. Mesothelioma is a terrible disease from which more than 3,000 people die in this country every year. The Government are completely committed to supporting treatment, prevention and compensation. In the last three months my noble Friend Lord Prior has had a number of discussions with interested parties, and, as the hon. Gentleman will have noted, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor was able to announce £5 million of funding for a new mesothelioma research centre in last week’s Budget.
Alex Cunningham
The British Lung Foundation has welcomed the £5 million that the Government have announced for a national mesothelioma centre, but when will those funds be released, and how will the Government ensure that funding for research is sustained in the years that follow?
George Freeman
We are engaged in active discussions with the various parties, including charities such as Cancer Research UK, and we have received some interesting submissions from some of the research institutes. Over the coming weeks, we will consider how best to put that £5 million from the Government to work in order to maximise inward investment and build UK leadership in this important centre.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
14. What steps he is taking to ensure that people with muscle-wasting conditions who require a cough assist machine have access to such a machine, commissioned in the community by their clinical commissioning group.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Ben Gummer)
NHS England is working with Muscular Dystrophy UK through the Bridging the Gap project, and looking at issues such as the provision of cough assist machines, which are a local matter for clinical commissioning groups. A number of CCGs now have commissioning policies for these devices, based on a policy developed by Walsall CCG and shared nationally as an example of good practice by Muscular Dystrophy UK.
Mary Glindon
Twenty-one-year-old Freddie Kemp, who had muscular dystrophy, sadly died of cardiac and respiratory complications. He had been refused a machine by his CCG. The Minister said that he was working with Muscular Dystrophy UK. Will he meet representatives of that organisation to discuss what can be done to persuade CCGs to prioritise the provision of these important machines?
Ben Gummer
I thank the hon. Lady for bringing the matter to the House’s attention. Of course I will meet any groups who are concerned with it. I understand that the clinical evidence is divided in respect of the efficacy of cough assist machines as opposed to manual massage, but Walsall CCG has sought to resolve that—successfully, I understand—and other CCGs might wish to adopt its template. However, I will of course discuss with the hon. Lady personally the issues that she has raised.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
15. What the timetable is for the launch of the public consultation on HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis for adults at high risk of contracting HIV.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)
NHS England will invest £2 million over the next two years in order to run, together with Public Health England, early implementer test sites which will seek to answer the remaining questions about how PrEP could be commissioned in the most cost-effective and integrated way to reduce the incidence of HIV and sexually transmitted infections for those at the highest risk.
Catherine West
Yesterday NHS England scrapped plans to fund PrEP. Is there anything that the Minister can do to end this erratic and inconsistent decision making? Does she agree that yesterday’s decision to abandon the roll-out of a game-changing drug totally failed those who are at risk of contracting HIV?
Jane Ellison
NHS England’s senior specialised commissioning management team made that decision, and I think NHS England recognises that it could have been made earlier. However, it is also recognised that NHS England has already done valuable work. Some important lessons have been learned, and we do not want to lose that. We must now work with both NHS England and Public Health England to understand how we can continue to learn from, for example, the test sites.
Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)
I share some of the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) about the roll-out of PrEP, but it is only one tool in HIV prevention. Will my hon. Friend update the House on the progress of the HIV prevention innovation fund?
Jane Ellison
My hon. Friend is right to draw the House’s attention to the fact that PrEP is only one part of prevention, although obviously we understand its importance. He is also right to mention the innovation fund, which, of course, he championed. We have invested up to £500,000 in new and innovative ways to tackle HIV. Some excellent organisations have come forward with some very innovative approaches, and we have also established the first national HIV home sampling service.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
The latest performance figures show the challenges that the NHS faces in coping with extraordinary levels of demand. Despite these pressures, however, the Government are making good progress in our ambition that NHS care should be the safest and highest quality in the world. Figures from the Health Foundation show that the proportion of patients being harmed has fallen by more than a third in the past three years, that MRSA infections have nearly halved since 2010, and that C. diff infections fell by more than a third over the same period.
Dr Murrison
The “Five Year Forward View” said that the NHS would need between £8 billion and £21 billion extra from the Treasury by 2021. It got a commitment of £8 billion, which was opposed by the party opposite. Can the Secretary of State say when the Stevens plan will be formally reviewed, and where in the range between £8 billion and £21 billion he expects the real requirement will be found to lie?
Mr Hunt
We are actually putting in £10 billion of additional public money to support the NHS over the next few years. That means that we need to find between £20 billion and £22 billion of efficiency savings. We will be reviewing the progress of the plan as we go through it, but I want to reassure my hon. Friend that I meet the chief executive of NHS England to view the progress of the plan every week and that we are absolutely determined to ensure that we roll it out as quickly as possible.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
T4. I would like to express my sadness at the news that two people in my constituency lost their lives in a house fire yesterday. My thoughts are with their family and friends at this extremely sad time. The coalition Government legislated for NHS hospitals to earn up to 49% of their money from private patients. Arrowe Park hospital in my constituency is highly valued by local people for the service that it delivers, so for the sake of clarity will the Minister tell us whether he sees an increase in the number of NHS beds being used for private patients and a decrease in the number being used for NHS patients as a sign of success or a sign of failure?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Ben Gummer)
The matter of private beds is entirely for the trust to decide, but we are very clear that NHS patients should always come first.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
T3. In the last decade, under the then Labour Government, Crawley hospital saw its accident and emergency and maternity units close. However, I am pleased to say that in recent years we have seen casualty services returning, as well as the introduction of a GP out-of-hours service and a greater number of beds. Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating the NHS staff in my constituency who are working so hard to deliver these new services?
Mr Jeremy Hunt
I am absolutely delighted to join my hon. Friend in congratulating the staff in his constituency. A&E targets there have been met in the year to date: at the moment they are seeing 36,509 more people in under four hours every year compared with six years ago. The trust is meeting its 18-week target and its diagnostic waiting time target, so that is a very good performance.
Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)
T8. Scotland has consistently outperformed all other nations in the UK on A&E over the past year. With England’s performance dropping in every single month since weekly publication was abandoned last July, does the Secretary of State think it is time to return to more frequent analysis and to eliminate the obfuscation of the six-week delay in publication?
Mr Hunt
I am somewhat surprised at the complacency of the hon. Gentleman’s question after Audit Scotland identified in the autumn that performance against seven of the nine key targets for the Scottish NHS had deteriorated in the past three years, that spending since 2009 had fallen in Scotland while increasing in England, and that spending on private sector providers was increasing. The hon. Gentleman should think about that before he criticises what is happening in England.
Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)
T5. Successful cardiopulmonary resuscitation often involves people knowing where the nearest public access defibrillator is located. In my constituency, however, it is difficult to find out exactly where such defibrillators are located. Will the Minister ask the Department of Health to carry out a live mapping of public access defibrillators as well as ensuring that every workplace with a first aid point has a clear sign showing where the nearest defibrillator is located?
The Minister for Community and Social Care (Alistair Burt)
This work is already in hand through the British Heart Foundation. I should like to add that last week the Chancellor announced another £1 million to make public access defibrillators and CPR training more widely available in communities across England. Coupled with last year’s funding of £1 million, that means that there are now over 690 more publicly accessible defibrillators in communities across England. That mapping work is important, however, and my hon. Friend is right to raise it.
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
I believe that the Capsticks governance review, published today, will show that serious harm was caused to patients and staff, that there was a culture of bullying and harassment even after the Francis inquiry, and that Liverpool Community Health NHS Trust is the community equivalent of Mid Staffs. In the spirit of openness and transparency, will the Secretary of State instigate a public inquiry to establish the full extent of the harm caused to patients and staff?
Ben Gummer
May I commend the hon. Lady for the brave stance that she has taken on this difficult issue? I will certainly take her concerns seriously. I want to read the report now that it has been delivered, and will speak to her at the earliest possible opportunity to establish how the Government and local commissioners can take things forward. It is imperative that the NHS has the best possible culture for how staff are treated and heard. I hope she will look at the announcement made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State about ensuring that people have the freedom to speak up and safe spaces in which to blow the whistle.
Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)
T6. At Colchester general hospital, insurance premiums under the clinical negligence scheme for trusts have more than doubled to £11.2 million in four years. What steps is the Department taking to reduce that figure?
Ben Gummer
My hon. Friend points to variations across the service. Premiums sometimes go up and down in different trusts. We are examining the whole scheme at the moment, and I am happy to speak to him further about what we are doing.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
Does the Secretary of State agree that this week’s public debate about breastfeeding has been destructive and condemnatory of women who suffer from post-natal depression and struggle to bond emotionally, never mind physically, with their children? Do we need to reframe the debate and reduce, rather than reinforce, the stigma for mothers who want to do the best by their children?
Ben Gummer
As my right hon. Friend the Minister for Community and Social Care, who is responsible for mental health, takes forward the increase in funding for perinatal mental health, he will want to work with me on breastfeeding rates and the relationship between breastfeeding and mental health that the hon. Gentleman correctly raises.
David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)
T7. Is my right hon. Friend aware of the agreement struck by President Obama and Prime Minister Modi of India to collaborate on the research and development of traditional medicines for preventive and palliative cancer care? Should we not be aiming for a similar agreement, bearing in mind antimicrobial resistance?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)
It is worth saying that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence does not recommend homeopathy to treat any health condition. My hon. Friend mentioned antimicrobial resistance, and an increasing number of studies from around the world show that resistance to common treatments is growing, which serves to underline the importance of the responsible stewardship of all drugs and medicines and why the international efforts on AMR, in which the UK is at the forefront, are so important.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
Given the latest, very worrying reports about goings on at the office of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, does the Secretary of State still have confidence in the leadership of this vital regulator?
Mr Jeremy Hunt
I have expressed my concerns on the behalf of patients about some of the things that have been happening, but I respect the fact that it is a matter for this House and its relevant Committee, not for the Government, to deal with. I do have concerns, and it is important that patients have confidence in the ombudsman, because it is a vital, independent avenue to challenge NHS trusts when things go wrong.
Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)
T9. Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating chief executive Glen Burley and the whole team at Warwick hospital on delivering the excellent new orthopaedic ward, which I was honoured to be invited to open? Will he tell the House what support the NHS is being given for similar state-of-the-art facilities across the country?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Life Sciences (George Freeman)
I am delighted to join my hon. Friend in that congratulation and to confirm the announcement in the autumn statement that the Government are committed to putting £4.8 billion of capital into the NHS every year through to 2021. That will include funding for proton beam therapy and for major new hospitals at Brighton and at Sandwell, in addition to our billion pounds a year for NHS research and our £700 million a year for medical research through the Medical Research Council.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
The financial year ends next week. What does the Secretary of State expect the NHS provider budget deficit to be by then?
Mr Jeremy Hunt
We know that the deficit will be bigger this year, and that there is extreme pressure. Part of the reason for that is that NHS trusts have rightly said that, in the wake of what happened at Mid Staffs, they want to ensure that their wards are properly staffed, but they have done that by using unsustainable agency staff. The most important thing that we need to do is to move to permanent full-time staff rather than agency staff who are too expensive and not good for care.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
T10. A number of my constituents are unable to access an NHS dentist. May I ask the Minister to look at the availability of NHS dentists in my constituency and use his good offices to ensure that there is enough capacity for all of my constituents who want to use a good NHS dentist to be able to access one locally?
Alistair Burt
Overall access to NHS dentistry is good, but it does vary from area to area, and West Yorkshire, as the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) well knows, is one of the areas that worries us and that we are trying to do something about. Work is being undertaken in the West Yorkshire area to look at issues around NHS dentistry. I have met a number of hon. Members to discuss this matter. It has my attention, so I will be monitoring it closely, and my hon. Friend was right to raise it.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
The King’s Fund analysis revealed that there will be not a £10 billion, but a £4.5 billion real-terms increase to the NHS. Will the Health Secretary apologise for misleading not just this House but the public as a whole?
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Lady must not accuse a Member of misleading the House. If she wishes to insert the word “inadvertently” she would spring back into order, which is where I am sure that she wishes to be. Do I take it that the word “inadvertently” has been inserted?
Mr Jeremy Hunt
The hon. Lady may inadvertently have not been listening to my previous answers. Let us look at what Simon Stevens, the chief executive of the NHS, actually said about that spending settlement. He said that the Government had listened to and “actively supported” the NHS case for public spending.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
Following the very welcome announcement of a graduated levy on sugar, sweet and drinks manufacturers, will the Minister please tell the House what discussions she is having with manufacturers to speed up the reformulation process and also to introduce a differential in price at the point of sale? Given the importance of childhood obesity, will the Department welcome the opportunity to take over the lead on this strategy so that we can make progress on this vital issue?
Jane Ellison
There are a number of invitations there, some of which I will resist. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the importance of this announcement. Obviously, it is the first step towards the Government’s comprehensive childhood obesity strategy, which we will be launching in the summer. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was absolutely right to go ahead with this and to move forward. The burden of childhood obesity, as she knows all too well, falls very, very heavily on poorer communities, and my right hon. Friend was absolutely right to champion that measure, because it will make the most difference in the poorest areas.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
Families with boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy are anxiously awaiting the NICE guidance to be published next week. Can I get an assurance from the Minister that, with this drug already being licensed and available in 18 countries, if NICE approves it, NHS England will bring the funding forward very quickly?
George Freeman
The hon. Gentleman is a doughty campaigner. Although he tempts me to pre-empt the decisions of NICE, I cannot, and it would not be appropriate for me to do so. I am afraid that we will just have to wait for its decisions, which are rightly taken on the best clinical evidence.
Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)
Hednesford is a dementia-friendly town, and I am pleased that my office team, who are based on Market Street in Hednesford, will be receiving dementia-friendly training next month. Does the Minister agree that we should be encouraging more towns to become dementia-friendly?
Mr Jeremy Hunt
I absolutely recognise the excellent work that is happening in Hednesford, and in South Staffordshire, as a dementia-friendly community. I know that there are more than 2,000 dementia friends in Cannock Chase. Fantastic work is going on, and I thank my hon. Friend for her support.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
When will we have a decision on the future of the human papilloma virus vaccination programme? Will it be clear, and is there due engagement with the devolved counterparts?
Jane Ellison
As the hon. Gentleman knows, two programmes are going on. There is a very large-scale piece of modelling work going on with regard to the HPV vaccination for boys, and that work, as I have previously told the House, will look to report in 2017. We already have guidance on HPV for men who have sex with men from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, and we are working through it in some detail to see how we can take it forward in practical terms.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am afraid that demand exceeds supply. We must now move on.
Points of Order
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Have there been any discussions between you and the Government about a possible statement on the terrible events unfolding in Brussels? Of course, we do not yet know the final facts, but a number of innocent people have been killed. We do not yet know whether there are any British victims, but there will be many families anxious to find news of relatives. I am sure that those on both sides of the House would welcome the opportunity to question the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary about the ongoing efforts of the police and security services here to protect the public in the UK from similar attacks.
Mr Speaker
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for the terms in which he put it to me. As Members present throughout Question Time will know, condolences have been expressed by Members on both sides of the House as regards the victims of this terrible outrage and their loved ones who will live with the consequences. The short answer to the right hon. Gentleman is that I have had no such discussions with any Minister to date. I think that it is a matter of public record that the Prime Minister has been chairing an important meeting of Cobra this morning and I think it will be accepted in all parts of the House, not least by the right hon. Gentleman, that the Prime Minister is punctilious in coming to the House to address these matters at such a point as he feels that he has the requisite level of information to impart to colleagues and is best placed to be informative and helpful. We should await the development of events, but the serious concern registered by the right hon. Gentleman will be keenly felt across the House. I thank him again for the terms in which he raised his point.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. My thoughts are with the people of Brussels, as will be those of all Members of the House. I understand that Ministers will as a priority work with our colleagues in Brussels, putting security in this country first. I have been contacted by a number of my constituents who travelled to Brussels earlier today and who are trying to get home, as I am sure are many others. They have been told by the airline, Ryanair, that it will cost them £6,000 to be brought back to this country. Through you, Mr Speaker, may I ask Ministers to intervene and suggest to Ryanair and other carriers that all efforts are made to help those who want to come back to this country in a reasonable way?
Mr Speaker
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his attempted point of order. That is not a matter for the Chair, but, again, he has raised a question of real and immediate concern. That real and immediate concern will have been heard by those on the Treasury Bench and, knowing the hon. Gentleman’s ingenuity, I feel sure that if he does not receive some sort of contact or reassurance from an appropriate quarter, he will not rest in continuing to highlight his concern, and I thank him for doing so.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. On Friday, the Government were taken to the Supreme Court by ClientEarth for failing to meet EU air quality standards which have resulted in 40,000 deaths a year at a cost of £20 billion a year. Are you aware of any statement that will be made by the Government on this important issue, particularly in the light of what is happening in the Budget? They have an opportunity to stop people dying and becoming disabled, rather than charging people for being disabled.
Mr Speaker
I confess that I have received no such indication. Once again, the hon. Gentleman has put his concerns on the record. They will have been heard and doubtless he will return to the matter if he does not receive the satisfaction he seeks.
Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I seek your advice and guidance on a matter of principle for this House? Select Committees have the power through this House to send for persons, papers and records, to enable them to obtain oral and written evidence to allow them to undertake their work. In keeping with this long-established power, the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, which I chair, has sought to take evidence from the owner of Sports Direct, Mr Mike Ashley, on the treatment of workers at his company. That was in response to reports that workers at Mr Ashley’s warehouse in Shirebrook were not being paid the minimum wage. I have received correspondence from workers at Sports Direct, who have told me of practices such as employees being made to clock out but having to continue to work so that wages were not over budget; of staff kept for an hour after their scheduled finish time without pay to tidy shops; and of workers finishing work at 5 am and being required back at work two hours later.
We on the Select Committee naturally and not unreasonably wish to question Mr Ashley on the review of working conditions at his company that he announced he would undertake personally. After his refusal to accept our initial invitation to attend on a mutually convenient date, last week the Committee formally ordered Mr Ashley to attend on 7 June. Yesterday he indicated to the press, although not to the Committee, that he has no current intention of attending the Committee. He referred to the order to attend as
“an abuse of the parliamentary process”
and described the Committee as “a joke”. I do not think that scrutinising reports of Victorian-type employment conditions in modern-day Britain is a joke.
Can you confirm, Mr Speaker, that the Committee has acted in accordance with the procedures of this House? Can you advise me what steps can now be taken to ensure that Mr Ashley complies with the very reasonable request, and then the formal order, of the BIS Committee?
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the Chair of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee for notice of his point of order. The House delegates to nearly all its Select Committees the power to send for persons, papers and records. Each Committee is free to decide whom to invite to give oral evidence, and if the invitation is refused, the Committee may decide to make an order for the attendance of a witness.
In response to the hon. Gentleman’s direct question, therefore, it appears to me that so far the proper procedures have been followed. As long as the Committee is acting within its terms of reference, the House expects witnesses to obey the Committee’s order to attend. If, after due consideration, the hon. Gentleman’s Committee wishes to take the matter further, the next step would be to make a special report to the House, setting out the facts. The hon. Gentleman may then wish to apply to me to consider the issue as a matter of privilege, and to ask me to give it priority in the House. Under procedures agreed to by the House in 1978 and set out on page 273 of “Erskine May”, this application should be made to me in writing, rather than as a point of order. I would then be happy to advise him on the options open to him.
Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. This could be a long, drawn-out process, based on what Mike Ashley has been doing and saying over the years. He operates zero-hours contracts for many thousands of people. There are very few full-time people. He believes that as a billionaire he can do as he likes. I put it on the record for you, Mr Speaker: you had better act very firmly with the person concerned. There used to be a woman in the House working for the Serjeant at Arms called Mary Frampton. We will need one to deal with him.
Mr Speaker
We have such a person. I can say only that I shall always profit by the counsels of the hon. Gentleman.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker.
Mr Speaker
I do not know that there is more to add, but I will give the hon. Gentleman the benefit of the doubt—he is a very experienced Member. I have tried to treat of this matter fairly and factually, but of course I will take a point of order from the hon. Gentleman if he persists.
Mr Winnick
The point of order I wish to raise with you, Mr Speaker, is simply this: in view of the obvious contempt that this person has shown for the House of Commons, would it not be appropriate for him to appear at the Bar of the House? [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] There have been occasions in the past when that has occurred, and the House of Commons has shown that it will not tolerate such contempt. I put it to you that that could perhaps be considered as well.
Mr Speaker
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I recognise that there are historical precedents, but it is only right for me to say that it is not for me to make any such decision. If we were to get to that point, and I am not suggesting that we shall do so—I am not seeking to anticipate events—that would be a matter for the House to decide, but I hope that I have dealt fairly, squarely and intelligibly with the important matter that the Chair of the Select Committee and others have raised.
Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Operators (Regulation)
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision about the skills and knowledge required of a person driving a taxi or private hire vehicle (TPHV) and related responsibilities of TPHV company operators and service providers; to require operators of TPHV companies and service providers to hold specified types and levels of insurance; to make provision about the tax liability of TPHV companies and service providers; and for connected purposes.
I am grateful for the opportunity to present the Bill, and I am delighted by the strength of support from right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House, which is reflected, I think, in the attendance today.
The Bill seeks to put fair competition and passenger safety at the heart of the taxi and private hire vehicle industry in London and across the country. The advent of new technology in the industry is revolutionising the way people navigate our great capital city; indeed, it is revolutionising transport in cities across the United Kingdom and the world. At its best, disruptive technology drives innovation and increases competition, with enormous benefits for businesses and consumers alike. However, as we have seen on the streets of London, it also brings significant challenges. The Bill seeks to address some of those challenges, which have been neglected for far too long.
The debate about the future of London’s taxi industry has been unfairly characterised as a debate between those who support competition and innovation on the one hand and those who want to cling to the past on the other. That is lazy analysis. It is true that London’s iconic black taxi trade is at risk; indeed, I would go as far as to say that the threat to it is existential—but the cabbies I represent are not afraid of change and innovation, they are not afraid of new technology and they are not afraid of competition. However, they are finding it increasingly hard to compete in a changing marketplace with both hands tied behind their backs. [Interruption.] It is great to see even the Chancellor taking an interest in their plight. [Hon. Members: “Taxi?”] The Chancellor may need a taxi.
I represent many black taxi drivers; indeed, Ilford North was once known as “Green Badge valley”, and it is still not unusual to see taxis parked on the driveways of Gants Hill, Clayhall, Barkingside and Woodford. I also represent hundreds of minicab drivers and drivers who work for new market entrants such as Uber. Like many Londoners, I use black taxis, particularly in central London. I also use minicabs and apps such as Uber locally. I welcome the choice and enjoy the benefits of competition, but I also recognise that the explosion in the number of private hire vehicles in London presents regulatory challenges and risks for passengers.
An investigation for LBC by Theo Usherwood exposed the ease with which individuals can access a private hire licence without adequate insurance. We know that a number of vehicles are already on the road without appropriate insurance. Last year, The Guardian was able to demonstrate how easy it was for an Uber driver to pick up a customer, having provided fake insurance paperwork via the company’s operating system. Some private hire vehicles are illegally plying for hire and touting, increasing the risk of passengers getting into cars driven by unlicensed and unknown drivers, with considerable risk to their safety. This is an illegal practice that the regulators ought to be acting a lot harder on. Guide Dogs UK found in a survey of assistance dog owners that 43.5% of respondents had been refused access to private hire vehicles, and it is all too common for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender passengers to experience discrimination.
Though I enjoy price competition as much as anyone else, is it really fair to expect cabbies to compete on fares while Transport for London continues to put up regulated fares for black taxis and apps such as Uber are able to drive their prices down, as profit-shifting allows them to avoid paying their fair share of taxes here in the UK? If we fail to act, London’s iconic black taxis will be driven off our streets. This is bad for competition, bad for passengers, and bad for London.
The Bill proposes action in three areas to improve passenger safety and make competition fairer so that our black taxi industry can continue to survive and thrive alongside minicabs and other private hire operators. First, on the issue of training, private hire vehicle drivers undertake only a rudimentary topographical test and in many cases do not undergo formal training. This sees many relying on sat-nav, which means that the risk of collision is increased owing to sharp braking or not focusing on the road ahead. The Bill proposes that in order to obtain a PHV—private hire vehicle—licence all drivers should complete an enhanced Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency assessment, requiring additional skills such as how to drop off and pick up passengers and wheelchair exercises to learn how to support the disabled. PHV drivers should also undertake an assessment on the principle of plying for hire and touting regulations, so that there can be no excuses for breaching regulations. PHV drivers should be properly and fully trained and assessed in their obligations under the Equality Act 2010, so that protected groups such as LGBT people and disabled people can travel with confidence.
The second issue that the Bill seeks to address is insurance. The current system requires “hire and reward” insurance for all drivers where the responsibility for insurance rests with individual drivers. There is a higher cost for this insurance, which means that many private hire vehicle drivers can be tempted to opt for a cheaper form of insurance when accepted by a licensed operator. In order to resolve this issue, I propose moving to a system of operators’ insurance that places the responsibility on operators as a prerequisite for obtaining their licence. This will deliver three key benefits for passengers and the industry: guaranteeing that cars managed by the operator are insured so that customers have confidence that they are safe; reducing the cost of insurance through bulk purchasing, thereby delivering better value for money; and making the regulators’ task easier because checking a few thousand operators is easier than checking over 100,000 individual policies. Some companies, such as Addison Lee, already do this voluntarily, meaning that customers and businesses can book with the confidence that is sometimes lacking around private hire operators.
Finally, my Bill makes provision for the tax liabilities of taxi and private hire vehicle companies. It cannot be right that some companies in this industry are making huge profits but not paying their fair share of taxes. Lower fares are great, but some operators are frankly trying to drive their competition off the road through new apps by offering lower fares made possible by offshore tax arrangements, in effect robbing Peter to pay Paul. I pay particular tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), who a week ago today brought forward her own ten-minute rule Bill on transparency for multinationals. Her proposals would be a refreshing step in the right direction.
This Bill would introduce a requirement for the Chancellor or the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to make an annual statement to this House on the progress of the OECD’s base erosion and profit-shifting project and the action that Her Majesty’s Government are taking to ensure that there is proper scrutiny in this area—though I hope that the Chancellor might be better at making progress there than on his own targets. It is a small measure, but it would indicate the view of this House that the Government need to do much more to tackle tax avoidance. These changes collectively would go some way towards levelling the playing field. TfL needs to go further than it currently proposes, and, in any event, these challenges also exist in towns and cities across our country.
Gwyneth Paltrow once said:
“Brits are far more intelligent and civilised than Americans. I love the fact that you can hail a taxi and just pick up your pram and put it in the back of the cab without having to collapse it.”
Perhaps more profoundly, Professor John O’Keefe, a Nobel prize-winning neuroscientist, said:
“Some of the best navigators in the world are London taxi cab drivers. They have to learn 25,000 streets and how to get from one to the other.”
I am sure that the whole House will agree that Brits are more intelligent and taxi cab drivers are the best navigators in the world. They are also small businessmen and women providing a world-famous service and struggling to make their families a good living. We owe them a chance to compete fairly, and we owe it to our great capital city to ensure that the iconic black taxi industry and the great iconic black taxi itself are not consigned to London’s history books. For these reasons, and so many more, I commend this Bill to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Wes Streeting, Lyn Brown, Neil Coyle, John Cryer, Clive Efford, Mr David Lammy, Kate Osamor, Joan Ryan, Mr Virendra Sharma, Mr Gareth Thomas and Mr Charles Walker present the Bill.
Wes Streeting accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 22 April and to be printed (Bill 154).
Ways and Means
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
(8 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
18:40 - The House divided: - Ayes: 310 / Noes: 275 - Question accordingly agreed to.
18:57 - The House divided: - Ayes: 307 / Noes: 62 - Question accordingly agreed to.
19:10 - The House divided: - Ayes: 311 / Noes: 274 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Mr Speaker
Before I call the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I should inform the House that I have selected amendments (b) and (a), so both can be debated together with the Budget motions today. With the leave of the House, I will call the shadow Chancellor to move amendment (b) after the Chancellor has opened the debate. At the end of the day’s debate, the Question will first be put on amendment (b). As long as time permits before 7 pm, I shall then call the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) to move amendment (a) formally, and the Question on that amendment will be put. The House will then proceed to decide on the Budget resolutions.
The First Secretary of State and Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)
Let me start by offering all our condolences to the victims, and their families, of the attacks in Belgium. The full details of this morning’s horrific attacks are still emerging, but we know that at least 13 people died in the attack at Brussels airport and that there are reports of multiple dead at Maelbeek metro station. As details of these horrific events continue to unfold, my thoughts and prayers, and indeed those of right hon. and hon. Members in all parts of the House, are with those who have lost loved ones or have been injured.
Earlier this morning, the Prime Minister chaired a meeting of Cobra attended by the Home Secretary, myself and others. The police have confirmed that, on a precautionary basis, they are increasing the policing presence at key locations, including transport hubs, to protect the public and provide reassurance. In London, the Metropolitan police have deployed additional officers to patrol key locations and the transport network, and Border Force efforts have been intensified.
It is too soon yet to comment on the details of these attacks, which are still emerging, but the Government would reiterate that the UK threat level remains at “severe”, meaning that an attack is highly likely. We would urge the British people to remain vigilant, and the Home Secretary will keep the House updated. But let us be clear: terrorists seek to threaten our values and our way of life, and they will never succeed. It is a reminder of what a precious thing our democracy is, and this Budget debate is part of that democratic process.
This is the first time in 20 years that a Chancellor has spoken on the last day of the Budget debate, and I think it is fair to say that we have had a livelier debate about this Budget than about many. Let us be clear: the key principles behind this Budget are that if we are going to deliver a strong and compassionate society for the next generation, we have to live within our means, we have to back business to create jobs and we have to make sure work pays by putting more money into the pockets of working people. That is what we committed to in our manifesto. That is what the British people elected us to deliver. That is what this Budget does, and that is what we are going to vote on tonight.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Osborne
I will give way in a moment, but let me straightaway address the resignation of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith). I am sorry that my right hon. Friend chose to leave the Government. Let me here, in this House, recognise his achievements in helping to make work pay, protecting the vulnerable and breaking the decades-old cycle of welfare dependency. Together, we had to confront a huge deficit and uncontrolled welfare spending. Of course, there is always robust discussion between the Treasury and the spending Departments when money needs to be saved. The decisions we make to keep our economy secure are always difficult, and where we do not get them right, I have always been prepared to listen and learn.
I am very proud that my right hon. Friend and I worked together longer than any two people who have done our jobs before us in any Government, and we have been part of the team that has reduced the number of people on out-of-work benefits to levels not seen for 40 years, reduced inequality, seen poverty fall, seen child poverty fall and seen pensioner poverty fall, and got a record number of people into work—a long-term economic plan and welfare reform delivering a fairer society for all.
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to the Chancellor for giving way. It is less than a week since he stood up to deliver the Budget and made that decision affecting disability independence payments—something that upset many hundreds of thousands of people across this country. He has made a welcome U-turn, but should not he now acknowledge that that decision was a mistake that he should say sorry for?
Mr Osborne
I am going to come on to speak about the disability benefits and our way forward, but I have made it very clear—I have just said it—that where we have made a mistake, where we have got things wrong, we listen and we learn. That is precisely what we have done. Where is the apology from the Labour party for the things that they got wrong? Why don’t they take a leaf out of that book? Why don’t they get up and apologise for the countless decisions that added to the deficit—that bankrupted our country?
The progress we have made on social justice did not happen by accident. It happened because we in this Government set out to turn our economy around, to control spending, to back business and, yes, to reform welfare.
Mr Osborne
I will give way in a moment to my former partner in the coalition Government that undertook many of these welfare reforms. The reform has meant difficult decisions to strengthen the incentives to find work and the sanctions for not doing so; to make sure that every hour extra that people work is rewarded, instead of seeing them trapped in dependency; and to cap benefit payments so that our welfare system is fair both to those who need it and to those who pay for it. It has not been easy, and it has often been opposed, but the truth is that many of the acts of progressive social change that we seek to achieve in government are difficult and they are opposed. In any democracy, you have to fight to make lasting improvements in society, and that is what we have done.
Tim Farron
I thank the Chancellor for giving way, and I want to associate myself with the remarks that he made earlier about the appalling situation in Brussels.
Does the Chancellor agree with me that the one thing that is more dangerous for our economy than his remaining Chancellor is that we might leave the European Union; and does he agree that his being called out by his former colleague as acting not in the economic interests of the country, but in a short-term political way, introduces a risk that the referendum will be a referendum on him, not on the future of our role in Europe? Will he act in the national interest and resign?
Mr Speaker
May I remind Members that interventions should be brief? We want to hear from both Front Benchers, and I want to hear from dozens of Back Benchers. I repeat that interventions should be brief.
Mr Osborne
That was like one of those interminable interventions at ECOFIN. I happen to think that it is better to be in that council than not, but that is a debate for another day. We are talking here about the reforms we are making to welfare and to our economy.
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
I am grateful to the Chancellor for giving way. Is he aware that had he stuck with Labour’s plans for fuel duty, a litre of petrol would cost 18p more than it does? Has he assessed what impact that would have on the lowest-earning people in our society?
Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we had stuck with the fuel duty escalator that we inherited from the last Government, it would have cost much more to fill up a car, which would have cost small businesses much more. We took action in this Budget to freeze fuel duty for the sixth year in a row, because we are on the side of working people.
Sir Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)
To put this debate in context, would my right hon. Friend like to share with the House, in both financial and non-financial terms, how much help this Government have given to assist the sick and the disabled since May 2010?
Mr Osborne
I am coming on to talk about disability benefits, but my right hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to the support we give—close to £50 billion—to disabled people. When we look just at the disability benefits, disability living allowance and personal independence payment, we see that that support has gone up from £13 billion when we came into office to £16 billion today, and it will go up to £18 billion in the future. As my excellent right hon. Friend for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb), the new Welfare Secretary, made clear yesterday, we continue to give support to disabled people. I will come on to deal with that in detail.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
The Chancellor boasted when he opened the debate that this was the first time a Chancellor had opened the final day of a Budget debate. He will know that that is because it is also the first time a Chancellor has had to drop the biggest revenue raiser in his Budget within two days of announcing it. The former Work and Pensions Secretary, who has just resigned and to whom the Chancellor paid great tribute, described the Budget as “deeply unfair” and “drifting” in a wrong direction that will divide the country, not unite it. He said all those words after the Chancellor announced that he was ditching the PIP cuts. Is the former Work and Pensions Secretary deluded?
Mr Osborne
I am glad that the right hon. Lady intervened, because I have done a little research and, frankly, I wish that when she was the Chief Secretary to the Treasury we had seen a few more revenue raisers in Budgets, such as savings in welfare and savings in public expenditure. During the period in which she was the Chief Secretary, the deficit went from £76 billion a year to £154 billion a year. The measures that my right hon. Friend and I have been taking over the last six years are to clear up the mess that she and her colleagues in government left.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Osborne
Let me make a little more progress, and then I will come back. The proof that these difficult changes are worth while—
Mr Osborne
I will give way to the right hon. Lady. I have said that when we have made a mistake, we have listened and learned. When is she going to apologise and say that she made mistakes and her colleagues made mistakes during that period in government, which is what we have been clearing up for the last six years?
Yvette Cooper
The Chancellor did not address the issue of the unfairness of his Budget, so will he address the issue of the revenue behind his Budget? He has abandoned £4.4 billion in revenue raisers from his Budget. Where is that money going to come from, or will he change the scorecard that he set out?
Mr Osborne
I will tell you what is unfair: to saddle the next generation with debts you have no way of paying off. That is what the right hon. Lady did. [Interruption.] That is what she did. I will come on specifically to disability benefits, but let me tell her about fairness and what we have done over the last six years. We have taken action that means 500,000 fewer children are growing up in workless households than when she was at the Treasury, 1 million fewer people are on out-of-work benefits and over 2 million more people are in work than when we came to office. That is the social justice record we on this side of the House are proud of.
I am also proud that the work continues, and in this Budget we are taking further steps to build a stronger society. There is money and reform to improve our nation’s schools. There is action to reduce sugar intake and give our children better healthcare. There is support for the savings of low-income families. There is more help and housing for homeless people. There are personal allowance increases that will lift another 1 million of the low-paid out of income tax altogether, and there is an increased minimum wage ahead of the introduction of the first ever national living wage in just two weeks’ time. Those are all in the Budget we will debate today—all the actions of a compassionate, one nation Conservative Government determined to deliver both social justice and economic security.
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
The new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said yesterday, in his first statement, that the Government would not be making any further cuts to welfare during this Parliament, but later on he said that there were “no plans” to make further cuts to welfare during this Parliament. Will the Chancellor now confirm, for the sake of disabled people and others, that there will be no further cuts to the welfare budget in this Parliament?
Mr Osborne
Yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State gave exactly the Government’s position, which is that,
“we have no further plans to make welfare savings beyond the very substantial savings legislated for by Parliament two weeks ago, which we will…now focus on implementing.”—[Official Report, 21 March 2016; Vol. 607, c. 1268.]
I will now address the specific issue of welfare savings and disability, but I should have thought that the hon. Lady, when she got to her feet, might have thanked the Government for delivering the flood defence schemes that she asked for for her city, and which were in the Budget statement a week ago.
Let me turn to the disability benefits. We are proud that this Government are providing more support to the most disabled people. It was very clear that while the reforms proposed to personal independence payments two weeks ago drew on the work of an independent review, they did not command support. We have listened, and they will not go ahead. Even if they had, this Government are spending more on disabled people than the previous Labour Government ever did.
People have asked what this means for future support for disabled people, for our welfare cap and for the numbers in the Budget. Let me directly address all three points.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Osborne
Let me address these points, and then I am happy to take interventions.
First, over 3 million disabled people are now in work, which is 300,000 more than just a couple of years ago. We are also providing more support than ever before for the most disabled people. The budget has risen, will continue to rise and is much greater than the one we inherited. We are going to take our time, listen, consult widely and continue to build a system of disability support that works much better with our health and social services. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in his excellent statement yesterday, we will continue to support disabled people, and we will work with him to make sure that we do.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
Does the Chancellor agree with me that we can be a compassionate Conservative Government only if we have a strong, stable economy, with a reduced deficit, to enable us to protect the most vulnerable in society?
Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was coming on to make precisely that point.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Osborne
Let me deal with the measures we are taking to control spending, and then I will take some interventions.
The welfare cap is the instrument we have introduced to set out, in a transparent way to Parliament, what we aim to spend on welfare. It is independently judged by the Office for Budget Responsibility every autumn, which is when we either have to comply with the cap or explain to Parliament and the country why we have not done so. I find it incredible to hear Labour Members protesting about the welfare cap. It never existed at all under a Labour Government: there was no cap, no control on the largest area of Government spending, no transparency, no independent forecast, and as a result, welfare costs soared by 60% and the country was brought to the brink of bankruptcy.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
On Friday afternoon a couple, Mr and Mrs Ford, came to visit me at my surgery. Mr Ford, who is in a wheelchair, is unable to feed himself, dress himself or do anything for himself. They live on £559 a month in PIP, plus £63 per week in carer’s allowance. They still have a mortgage to pay. They have clocked up 80 years of national insurance contributions between them. They ask the simple question, “How are we meant to cope?” They were in a real state of distress. Will the Chancellor please now apologise to such people for the distress that he has caused?
Mr Osborne
I have already said that we are not going ahead with those changes. [Interruption.] I have addressed these issues. The truth is that that family and many more families are getting increased support under this Government. We would not be able to provide any of that support unless we had a strong economy and we controlled public spending, because the people who suffer most when the economy—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I apologise for having to interrupt the Chancellor. [Interruption.] Order. Members are yelling—in some cases, from sedentary positions—very noisily. If people put questions to the Chancellor, they must leave him to respond. The same will go for Government Back Benchers when they no doubt challenge Members speaking from the Opposition Benches. Let us try to restore some sort of order to this debate.
Andrew Griffiths
Will the Chancellor confirm to the House that this Government are spending £2 billion more on support for the disabled, that inequality is at its lowest rate for 25 years according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies and that there are 2 million more people in work thanks to this Government? Is that not what we are doing for the vulnerable?
Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: more people in work, reduced inequality, reduced poverty, more disabled people in work and, by the way, we got in a freeze on beer duty as well.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Osborne
Let me make a little progress, and then I will give way again.
Not proceeding with the PIP changes means that spending on disabled people will be just over £1 billion a year higher by the end of the decade than was set out in the Budget. This will be an important factor, but only one of many, that will affect the overall forecast for welfare that the OBR will make in the autumn—
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Osborne
I am going to make some progress.
At that point, we will assess the level of the cap. What my right hon. Friend the new Work and Pensions Secretary said yesterday, with my full support, is that we do not have further plans to make welfare savings to replace the £1 billion more we will spend on PIP. We made very substantial savings in the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016, which has just passed through Parliament. We have now legislated for the £12 billion a year of working-age welfare savings we committed to in our manifesto, and we are now going to focus on implementing that.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Osborne
Before I give way, let me say this about benefits to pensioners because it has been raised. People say to me that we are not saving enough from pensioners while, in the same breath, complaining about everything from long-term increases in the state pension age—to keep pace with rising life expectancy—to restrictions on the lifetime allowances for the largest pension pots. The truth is that we have made substantial savings from pensioner welfare—£500 billion of savings—which are vital to the long-term sustainability of our public finances, but we have made these savings in a way that enables us to go on giving people who have worked hard all their lives a decent, generous basic state pension. We committed to that in our manifesto, and I am not going to take it away from people.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Chancellor accept that poorer people spend a much higher proportion, if not all, of their income, while richer people save? Does he not accept that his Budget, which has transferred money from poor people to rich people—it is a sheriff of Nottingham Budget, robbing the poor to pay the rich—will undermine growth and deficit reduction, which is wrong both morally and economically?
Mr Osborne
Under this Government, the richest 1% are paying a higher proportion of income tax receipts than in any single year of the last Labour Government whom the hon. Gentleman used to support when he was a Member of Parliament for Croydon—until he was replaced by a much better Member of Parliament for Croydon.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Osborne
Let me make progress, and then perhaps I will take more interventions. On the Budget numbers, I find it ironic to receive all these expressions of concern from Labour Members about making the sums add up when they presided over the biggest single fiscal fiasco in the country’s history and have a black hole in their current plans so large that it would break the Hadron collider.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Osborne
I will give way in a moment, but let me make this point. The central fiscal judgment of the Budget, and of this Government, is clear: borrowing has been cut from £155 billion when we came to office to £55 billion next year, and there have been falls every year; and higher spending on people with disabilities will be reflected in the autumn statement forecast, and we do not propose to make any further changes ahead of that. We can afford to absorb such changes when we are getting public spending under control, and we can make those changes and still achieve a sensible surplus of 0.5% of GDP by 2019-20. In short, we will go on delivering the economic security that this country elected us to provide.
Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)
Talking of Labour fiascos, may I remind the House of Gordon Brown’s 10p tax fiasco? We have taken 3 million of the lowest paid workers out of tax altogether.
Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right—what a contrast! This Government turned the 10p tax into 0p as we raised the personal allowance and took the poorest out of tax altogether.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
If it has been relatively simple to absorb this change, why on earth did the Chancellor introduce it in the first place and frighten the life out of seriously disabled people in this country? People were terrified about what was being proposed, yet the Chancellor has just said that we can absorb this change easily. Why did he do it in the first place?
Mr Osborne
If we take no decisions to control welfare spending and public expenditure, we destroy the nation’s finances, and the people who suffer are precisely the most vulnerable in society. Yes, we have taken difficult decisions, but where we have not got them right, we have listened and we have learned. If we had not taken those decisions, the country would be in an even bigger mess than the one we inherited.
George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)
The Chancellor mentions security, including for the poor. Does he realise that until Monday, 340,000 people on PIP were worried that their benefits were going to be cut? If he just apologised and changed that, we could move on and discuss the economics.
Mr Osborne
I could not have been clearer. I said that we listened, we learned, we made a mistake, and we withdrew the proposals. The hon. Gentleman talks about days of the week, and Thursday would have been the day when Scotland separated from the United Kingdom if the nationalists had had their way. They would have plunged that new country into a fiscal crisis the likes of which few western countries have ever seen. They would have impoverished the Scottish people and driven businesses away. They based all their numbers on oil revenue forecasts that were totally fanciful, and it is time that they got up and apologised for leading the Scottish people into that potential trap. Thankfully, the Scottish people thought better.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Osborne
Let me make some progress. We have taken difficult decisions to control public expenditure and reduce a crippling budget deficit.
Mr Osborne
I have given way twice to the right hon. Lady so I will now make progress and explain what we have done to clear up the mess she left. We took more decisions last week in the Budget, but we will also implement these decisions today to ensure that the work of reducing our deficit is done fairly, and that we ask more from the well-off. Look through the measures. They include provisions on dividends, lifetime pension allowances, stamp duty on second properties, banks and hedge funds, and a host of measures to tackle evasion and avoidance. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has been quoted a lot over the past four days in the Budget debates, and its head stated that
“the very highest earners have seen significant tax increases”.
I think that has been a reasonable thing to ask of the most well-off when faced with such a budget deficit, because we are all in this together.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
On personal economic security, during the Chancellor’s Budget statement, my constituent Dan Ball, who is aged 19 and from Amington, tweeted to say, “This lifetime ISA—where can I get one?” Does that not demonstrate that young people up and down the country see in this Budget an opportunity for their generation to save?
Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend is right to raise his constituent’s concerns about where he can get hold of the new lifetime ISA. It will be coming in from April next year, but his constituent can open a Help to Buy ISA now, roll it into the new lifetime ISA when it becomes available, keep the Government bonus, choose to save for a home or a pension, and not have to face the agonising choice that so many people have faced in the past. It is part of a Budget that backs savers.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Osborne
Let me make a little progress and then I will take more interventions. It is a classic socialist illusion to think that we can solve all society’s problems with taxes on the very richest, and it is the age-old excuse for not managing public spending or welfare costs. That brings me to a central point that I want to make to the House today: there is not some inherent conflict between delivering social justice and the savings required to deliver sound public finances—they are one and the same thing. Without sound public finances, there is no social justice.
Mr Osborne
I will give way in a moment to the Member for the taxi business.
It is the easiest thing in the world to do this job and say yes to every new demand for Government spending and to please all the people all of the time, but we know where that leads. We know that because before me we had a Chancellor who spent a whole decade going around the country saying yes to even more spending and ever higher welfare bills, and we know what happened then: it brought our country to the brink of collapse. That was not compassion; it was economic cruelty, and the people who paid the price are those who always pay the price when Government spending gets out of control and welfare bills spiral. It was not the politicians at the time who paid the price—no, they are happily sitting on the Opposition Benches; it was the poorest who paid the price and the most vulnerable who suffered. Those people lost their jobs and had their livelihoods snatched from them, and those are the people I am fighting for—real, decent, hard-working people, not numbers on a Treasury spreadsheet: people whose lives would be impoverished, and whose hopes and aspirations would be crushed, if we had gone on spending more and more than the country earns. Getting things right for those people is what I am all about, and that weighs on every decision that I have taken as Chancellor over the past six years. Those are the people whom we in the Conservative party have been elected to serve.
Wes Streeting
The Chancellor rightly talks about learning lessons, but it is also important to have clarity about the future. The Government line seems to be that there are no plans to further reduce the welfare budget, but yesterday the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said in the House
“we will not be seeking alternative offsetting savings”,
and that
“the Government will not be coming forward with further proposals for welfare savings.”—[Official Report, 21 March 2016; Vol. 607, c. 1279-86.]
Will there be further welfare cuts or not? What is the answer? The Chancellor has not offered any clarity this afternoon.
Mr Osborne
That is exactly the position set out by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and agreed by me and the Prime Minister. We understand that if we do not control spending, we will have a fiscal crisis. Because we are controlling spending and have passed difficult welfare legislation in recent months, the deficit is coming down and we are delivering economic security.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
Given what the Chancellor just said about the importance of fiscal responsibility, will he confirm that, had he listened to the advice of the Labour party over the past five years, our national debt would be £900 billion higher?
Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The analysis shows that, had we not taken the decisions to reduce the structural deficit, we would have added £1 trillion further to our national debt. That is proof that we can never trust Labour with the nation’s public finances.
Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)
Does the Chancellor agree that Conservative Members will not take lectures on fiscal management from the Labour party? Its legacy from 13 years in government was a Post-it note saying that there was no money left.
Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is all we found in the Treasury—a letter saying, “I’m sorry. There’s no money left.” After 13 years of a Labour Government, that summed up their economic achievement.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Osborne
Let me make a little progress before I give way again.
We will go on driving down the budget deficit. We are down from borrowing £1 in every £4 when I became Chancellor to borrowing just £1 in every £14 next year. We will then be on to the security and good times of a budget surplus—a country earning more than it spends, and a generation that does not pass its debts on to its children and grandchildren. That is what we committed to do in the manifesto and what we were elected to do, and it is what this Budget delivers.
Finally, let me turn to the measures in the Budget that back enterprise and business. Again, I completely refute Opposition Members who say there is a choice between backing business and promoting social justice. We cannot have social justice without a strong economy, and we cannot have a strong economy unless we have a tax system that backs business and enterprise.
James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)
We inherited an unprecedented budget deficit. It is not just about controlling spending—the country has to earn more. Is it not the case that the only way to do that is to cut corporation tax and capital gains tax so that our entrepreneurs can go out into the world, compete and earn this country the living it needs?
Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Without a strong economy, we cannot have social justice, and we cannot have a strong economy without successful, vibrant businesses.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
My right hon. Friend spoke a lot last week about the next generation and Chancellors who always said yes. One thing he said yes to last week that was very much welcomed by many young people in Southampton and across the south was the backing of the new children’s hospital in Southampton with £2 million of match funding. That is what looking after the next generation looks like. May I say thank you on behalf of many people across the south?
Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend campaigned tirelessly for that extra money for the hospital in Southampton—he raised the matter countless times in the Chamber. That shows that, if Members persevere on getting the vital services for their local constituency, the Government listen and deliver for them in this Chamber.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Osborne
Let me make a couple more points and then I will take another intervention.
Yesterday, the Leader of the Opposition stood at the Dispatch Box to reply to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. People have focused on what the Leader of the Opposition failed to say, but I am focused on what he did say. He said we should not be reducing taxes on business. In other words, he thinks the answer to the challenge of low productivity and of growth in an uncertain world is that taxes on business should be higher. I totally disagree with that approach. That is Labour’s answer these days: pile the taxes on business and increase the basic rate of income tax on working people, as they propose in Scotland. Again, the price would not be paid by Labour Members. It would be paid by the young people who cannot get jobs—they cannot get jobs in countries where business taxes are too high and where enterprise is stifled. It would be paid by people who work in our public services, whose resources would be drained as the economy became more and more uncompetitive. It would be paid by the whole country, as living standards declined and the nation got poorer.
If that is the Budget hon. Members want, they should vote in the No Lobby tonight. If they want a small business Budget that cuts taxes for small firms, takes 600,000 businesses out of paying business rates, and reforms commercial property tax so that small premises pay less, that is the Budget we are voting on tonight. If they want an enterprise Budget that boosts investment in our small and medium-sized firms, with lower CGT, dramatically reduces burdens on our vital oil and gas industry, and gives us the lowest headline business tax rates of any of our competitors, that is the Budget we are voting on tonight. If they want a one nation Budget that increases the resources for education, supports children’s healthcare, devolves power across our nation and builds infrastructure for our future, that is the Budget we are voting on tonight. If they want a Budget for working people that helps them to save for their future, freezes their fuel duty and cuts income tax so they keep more of the money they earn, that is the Budget we are voting on tonight.
It is a Budget that delivers security, that helps the next generation and that backs working people. It is a one nation, compassionate Conservative Budget, and I ask the House to support it tonight.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment (b), in paragraph (2), after “tax”, insert—
“(except in relation to value added tax on insulation, solar panels and any other category of energy-saving material or their installation)”.
I and my party share the sentiments expressed by the Chancellor and those across the House in condemnation of what happened in Brussels today. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families. We support the security measures, of course, taken by the Government and say to the people of Belgium that we stand with them.
I am glad to see the Chancellor has at least turned up today. Let me make it clear from the outset that, in my view, and I believe the view of many others, the behaviour of the Chancellor over the last 11 days calls into question his fitness for the office he now holds. I also believe that it certainly calls into question his fitness for any leading office in government. What we have seen is not the actions of a Chancellor, a senior Government Minister, but the grubby, incompetent manipulations of a political chancer.
For the record, let us go back to last Friday week. The Chancellor personally forced through cuts in personal independence payments. The statement issued by the Government that Friday on PIPs was not a consultation and not a suggestion; it was a statement of policy. Personal independence payments are the benefits that, for many disabled people, make life worth living. They help them get to work. They help them have some normality in their lives. Often, they keep people out of residential care. The Chancellor was willing to cut away that vital support to some of the poorest and most disadvantaged members of our community. Do not tell us that we are all in this together.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
Would it not at the very least help to dispel the impression that the Chancellor is acting in his own political interests, rather than in the national economic interest, if he made it clear today that he was not going to stand for the leadership of the Tory party so that he could concentrate on his job as Chancellor of the Exchequer?
John McDonnell
The reason I refer back to fitness for office is because many of us know the distress that has been caused to so many people over the past week.
James Cartlidge
The hon. Gentleman makes a very personal point about fitness for office on the day of a major terrorist attack. Will he withdraw his previous support for terrorist organisations that have attacked this country?
John McDonnell
Mr Speaker, you heard me share the sentiments of the whole House on the issue of Belgium. To bring that into the debate as a political point at this stage is unacceptable. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I made it clear earlier that attempts to shout the Chancellor down were unacceptable. That was made very, very clear and I do not think anybody would doubt or deny it. I make it similarly clear that no attempt in this Chamber will be successful if it is an attempt to shout down the shadow Chancellor. Get the message: it ain’t gonna happen.
John McDonnell
On that Friday before last, there was outrage among disability groups—the Multiple Sclerosis Society, Parkinson’s UK and Disability Rights UK. Why? Because all of them, like many of us, had gone through that process of agreeing the criteria—at least coming to some compromise on what would constitute the criteria for access to this benefit. But the Chancellor moved the goalposts, those already agreed through consultation. Disabled people and their families have been sick with worry about the threats to their benefits.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman has called into question the morality of the leadership of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, but would the hon. Gentleman please discuss with this House the morality that allows him to stand with bombers who murdered my friends in Northern Ireland and to question the integrity of the Chancellor? [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Before we proceed further, perhaps I can just say to the House, on my own account and on the basis of sound procedural advice, that we must stick to the matter of the Budget. [Interruption.] Order. I do not require any comeback or any comment, agreement or disagreement. Let us proceed in a seemly manner with the debate. That is in the House’s interest, and that is what the country has a right to expect.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
During the Chancellor’s opening speech, we heard him say that the Government have legislated to make £12 billion-worth of savings within the welfare budget. That means that this £4.4 billion attack on PIP was in addition, and it was based neither on social justice nor on compassion. Does that not show that this Government are mean-minded and prepared to attack people who have disabilities? It is not necessary to make these cuts in welfare and they should guarantee that they are not going to return with this cut.
John McDonnell
The proposals that came forward did not just shock those on our side of the House; they shocked many Members from across the whole of the House with their brutality.
John McDonnell
No, I have given way enough—I will come back to the hon. Gentleman.
There is scheduled to be a 6% real-terms decline in spending on disability benefits between 2015 and 2020. After that Friday, when we reached the Wednesday of the Budget, we discovered that these cuts to disabled people were being made to pay for capital gains tax cuts benefiting the richest 5% in our society and for corporation tax cuts. Of course, a deep feeling of unfairness was felt in this House, among Members in all parts of it. I welcome the expression of concern by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) during that period and his conversion to our cause of opposing these benefit cuts. But the first person to call attention to the scandalous targeting of people with disabilities was my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams). She rightly said, in response to the announcement:
“In coming to this decision, the Tories are yet again ignoring the views of disabled people, carers and experts in the field, trying to press ahead with changes, just two years since the introduction of the system.”
After it became clear that the cuts to PIP were planned as a way to fund tax cuts for the wealthy, my right hon. Friend the leader of the Labour party made this issue a key part of his excellent response to the Budget last week, and he was not alone in doing so. My hon. Friends the Members for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) and for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) were among several Opposition Members who pressed the Chancellor on the issue, as I did when opening the Budget debate last Thursday. I want to give thanks to everyone on our Benches and across the House who has helped to force this rethink and helped end the worry that thousands of disabled people have been experiencing in the past week.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
The shadow Chancellor is right about U-turns being embarrassing, but I remember his embarrassing U-turn on the fiscal responsibility charter. Does he regard himself at the moment as a socialist or a Marxist, and does he agree that all that the politics of the far left offers people is an equal share of misery?
John McDonnell
This is a debate about the threat of cuts facing some of the most vulnerable people in our society. This is not a time for engaging in student union politics in this Chamber.
By Friday of last week, the Chancellor was facing so much criticism that he needed to find someone to blame. So, in one of the most despicable acts we have witnessed in recent political history, the Chancellor sent out his large team of spin doctors to try to lay the blame on the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green. That was a disgraceful act of betrayal of one of the Chancellor’s own Cabinet colleagues to save his own skin and his leadership hopes.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Will the shadow Chancellor give way?
Mr Speaker
Order. [Interruption.] Order. Leave me to deal with this. Mr Cleverly, I have known you for years and you have always struck me as a very polite fellow. You are getting over-excited, young man. You will have an opportunity to intervene, perhaps in due course, but you don’t do it like that. Learn from a few old hands.
Pete Wishart
I am surprised that the shadow Chancellor is taken in by some of the crocodile tears from the Tories and this concern for the disabled. Surely he agrees that this is nothing to do with the Tories’ new-found concern for the disabled in this country—it is all about their euro civil war.
John McDonnell
Let me move on. I appreciate the point made. The betrayal was why the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green resigned. I have not agreed with a single policy that he has brought forward, but I do not doubt his sincerity in the policies that he has pursued.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend not agree with the words of the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) that this Chancellor’s policies are
“in danger of drifting in a direction that divides society rather than unites it”?
Was the right hon. Gentleman not right when he said that?
John McDonnell
I believe that the right hon. Gentleman’s interview on the Marr programme on Sunday expressed a profound concern that he had about the unfairness of the Budget, and we agreed with this. As I said, I have not agreed with a single policy he has pursued, but I do not doubt his sincerity. The right hon. Gentleman saw—
John McDonnell
I will in a minute. There is no need to shout out so loud again.
The right hon. Gentleman saw the unfairness of the PIP cuts to disabled people in the Budget. As he said, it is a Budget that benefits high earners. He also saw himself being set up by his own Cabinet colleague.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
The shadow Chancellor is right to say he does not agree with the former Secretary of State’s policies. Indeed, even with the U-turn on PIP disabled people are still left distressed by the reforms that will still be going through. Will he join me in urging the Chancellor and the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to look again at this very flawed process?
John McDonnell
I fully concur. The same week that this was being discussed, ESA was being cut by £30 a week.
James Cleverly
I thank the hon. Gentleman. He has been speaking now for 14 minutes. He has criticised Conservative Members for making this about politics and people, but I was just wondering when he will actually get around to talking about any of the Budget proposals.
John McDonnell
The role of the Opposition is to hold the Government to account. We are holding this Chancellor to account for a potential attack on disabled people that I believe would have devastated their lives.
What I find most disgraceful through all of this is that there has been no word of apology from the Chancellor or any Conservative Member. Apologise, I say. I say apologise for the pain and anguish he has caused disabled people and their families in the past two weeks. We all make mistakes. I understand that. But when you make a mistake and correct it, you should at least apologise.
Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)
Does my hon. Friend share my view that the most distressing thing the former Secretary of State said this weekend was the point he made about
“it doesn’t matter because they don’t vote for us”?
Is there not a constant thread running through everything—from the bedroom tax to local government cuts to this Budget—that this is a deeply political Government who do not care unless people vote Tory?
John McDonnell
I find a form of electoral politics, where you target a vulnerable group in society just because they do not vote for you, unacceptable. Not a word of apology! One nation Conservativism? It is a contradiction in terms.
Chris Philp
May I remind the shadow Chancellor that the richest 20% are now paying 52% of all income tax, which is up from 49%, and that the national living wage is putting money into the pockets of our country’s poorest citizens?
John McDonnell
The hon. Gentleman refers only to income tax. If he had looked at last weekend’s analysis of the overall cuts and what has happened with regard to tax and benefits, he would have seen that it is actually the poorest decile who are paying the most. The two groups hit hardest are young women with children and older women with caring responsibilities. Some 81% of the cuts are falling on women. This is a discriminatory Budget.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
We are pleased that the Chancellor has found that the PIP cuts are a cut too far, even for this ideological Government. Does the shadow Chancellor agree that characterising all benefits claimants as workshy, stay-in-bed, lazy scroungers, which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has done on many occasions, contributes to an atmosphere in which it is acceptable to enrich the better off at the cost of the poorest among us?
John McDonnell
That language has been used by the Conservative party. Let me return to the Budget. The hon. Member for Braintree (James Cleverly), who has now left us, asked me to return to the Budget, so let me press on.
Even worse, there is still no certainty about further welfare cuts. We were told yesterday by the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions—this was repeated today—that there were to be no further cuts to welfare in this Parliament. Within minutes, the Treasury were briefing to correct the Secretary of State, as that then became “no planned cuts”. There is complete confusion—chaos on chaos. Nobody believes or has any confidence in the mealy-mouthed assurances that are being given today.
John McDonnell
In a second.
The PIP withdrawal now leaves a £4.4 billion hole in the Chancellor’s Budget, as has been consistently pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper).
John McDonnell
Let me finish this point.
The simple fact is that the sums in the Budget, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, simply do not add up anymore. They simply do not compute.
Yvette Cooper
The shadow Chancellor will be aware that page 26 of the Red Book states that the Chancellor will set out plans to meet the welfare cap by this autumn, and that page 198 of the OBR report says that that will require further welfare savings of £3 billion a year. Did he hear the Chancellor say clearly this afternoon that he was going to ditch the plans for £3 billion a year of additional welfare cuts by the end of this Parliament?
John McDonnell
Cuts upon cuts, and who to? The most vulnerable in our society.
Steve Brine
I believe that the shadow Chancellor and the Leader of the Opposition, with whom I have served on Select Committees, are decent men. The shadow Chancellor said five minutes ago that he did not agree with a single policy introduced by the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions during his time in office. Given the shadow Chancellor’s new fiscal responsibility, with the new rules he announced just a week or so ago, will he tell the House—people will be looking to him, because he is the shadow Chancellor—whether he would keep the welfare cap? If he cannot tell me that, will he tell me just one single saving that he could make from the welfare budget?
John McDonnell
We supported the welfare cap. I find it ironic that that point is being made on behalf of a Government who are not meeting their own welfare cap. They are breaching it and then moving it up. They are moving the goalposts again.
Let us be clear that the £4.4 billion black hole in the Chancellor’s Budget means either further cuts in departmental budgets and to benefits, or stealth taxes. No solution has been announced today. We are told that all this will be resolved by the autumn. Between now and then, no public sector job, benefit or service will be safe.
Tim Farron
The hon. Gentleman is right that the Chancellor has a £4.4 billion black hole that needs to be filled by cuts to public services or by stealth taxes, but that is in existence only because the Chancellor has set himself a false target. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the real problem at the heart of the Chancellor’s credibility is the fiscal charter?
John McDonnell
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention and I will come back to that point in due course. I realise we are under pressure of time, Mr Speaker, so I will try to be as brief as I can.
The Chancellor’s political manoeuvring has real consequences. The drama over Budget week has clouded a further astounding revelation about his behaviour. His former Government colleague David Laws revealed at the weekend that the Chancellor pressurised senior officials to reduce their estimates of the funding needed to maintain the NHS. We discovered that the Chancellor had forced through a cut of almost half the funding—this was independently assessed—needed by the NHS. The result is that the NHS and hospital trusts around the country cannot plan. They are facing a crisis: waiting times are rising, staff are under intense pressure and morale is at rock bottom. At the start of the year, the NHS recorded its worst ever performance as services struggled to cope with demand. It is now facing its biggest funding crisis for a generation and that is putting patient care at risk.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
Does not the welfare cap, and support for it, suggest that if welfare spending goes up, we will have to revisit that spending? At that stage, would the shadow Chancellor cease to support the cap, or would he support measures to keep within it?
John McDonnell
We support a welfare cap, and we believe we have better policies—building homes, for example, rather than spending money on housing benefit—that would enable us to meet it.
Nothing in the Budget says that the NHS can find £22 billion in savings over the next few years. The idea is pure fantasy written into the Budget. It is typical of this Chancellor to opt for spin and presentation over addressing the real problems. He needs to stop living in fantasy land and to start being honest with the public over his own numbers.
John McDonnell
I have been extremely generous in giving way, but we are running out of time.
On schools, this was far from a Budget for the next generation, as the Chancellor claimed it was. Not only is the plan to turn every school in the country into an academy unpopular with parents and teachers, but we now know that schools face an 8% real-terms cut in their funding. This is the first time since the 1990s that schools’ funding has been cut.
As the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) said, at the heart of all this failure is the Chancellor’s economic incompetence. His huge mistake was to force through a fiscal rule that has proved to be unworkable. Against all sound economic advice, he put politics above economics and imposed a fiscal rule that now, like his Budget sums, simply does not add up. Virtually every target he set himself has been missed. On the deficit, which he promised would be eradicated last year, he has failed. The debt was supposed to be falling, but it is rising.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
The former Work and Pensions Secretary described the cuts to PIP as deeply unfair when juxtaposed against tax cuts for the wealthy. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Chancellor should consider scrapping that tax decrease for the wealthy to help to fill the £4.4 billion black hole, which might help to improve his competence?
John McDonnell
That is the sort of proposal we should be considering and voting for today.
Several hon. Members rose—
John McDonnell
I want to finish the next section of my speech. I am straining your patience, Mr Speaker, so I shall press on.
The Chancellor is set to leave our children with £1.7 trillion of Government debt. Hundreds of billions have been borrowed on his watch. The welfare cap, which the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) mentioned, is set to be breached each year until 2020. The OBR confirmed to the Treasury Committee that it would be breached by £20 billion over five years. The Chancellor has broken two of his own rules already. The third—the overall surplus—now hangs by a thread, and only with some seriously creative accounting will he meet it.
Meanwhile, across the country, the Chancellor’s economic approach is failing, as was evidenced by last week’s OBR report: forecast for growth—down; forecast for wages—down; forecast for productivity—down; and forecast for business investment—down again. Why will he not take responsibility for the last six years?
Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman celebrate the fact that 1,700 of the lowest paid in my constituency will be taken out of tax altogether as a result of the Budget, and that 1.3 million of the lowest paid have already been taken out of tax altogether in this Parliament?
John McDonnell
That is why we support the increase in the lower-rate threshold, but we have concerns that shifting the thresholds in that way actually benefits higher earners too much.
At the bottom of the Budget is a Chancellor who, as some have mentioned, is more interested in his political career than the welfare of disabled people, and more interested in becoming the leader of his party than in the health of our economy. He is not a Chancellor but a political chancer. I pay tribute to colleagues on both sides of the House who forced him to U-turn on his proposed cuts to disabled people.
This is not a one nation, compassionate Budget—nobody believes that—but a Budget shot through with unfairness at its heart. Even one of the Chancellor’s own Cabinet colleagues last week denounced it as fundamentally divisive and unfair. It is not a competent Budget. It fell apart within a couple of days, and the Chancellor still cannot explain how he will fill the £4 billion hole. This is not a Budget for the long term either—a long-term economic plan that lasts three days? It is a Budget built around short-term political tactics and it has backfired spectacularly. They used to say that a week was a long time in politics but, under this Chancellor, a weekend is the length of a long-term economic plan. What a failure!
This is not a Budget for the economy or the country, either, but one that is constructed around self-imposed austerity. It is about politics—incompetent politics at that —not economics, and it has blown up in the Chancellor’s face. For the sake of his party—he might think about that—and certainly for the sake of the country, it is time for him to go.
Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Chancellor on reviving the tradition of the Chancellor speaking on the last day of the Budget debate. It is one of the many things that my successor, Gordon Brown, should not have abandoned. I think we will agree it has enlivened the debate very considerably, compared with what usually happens. I also congratulate him on his extremely effective and spirited performance in defence of his Budget. He rightly took pleasure in his achievements so far in his term as Chancellor.
It is remarkable that we are having such a lively debate on the Budget at a time when, as we have just discovered from listening to the shadow Chancellor, there is absolutely no alternative economic strategy or policy on offer—no doubt my party will make up for that lack of challenge in its own curious way, but meanwhile I congratulate the Chancellor on where he has got so far.
In case the Chancellor is worried about the controversy surrounding the Budget, let me tell him that it is not unusual. I have been here so long that I have seen much worse. Geoffrey Howe’s 1981 Budget was extremely controversial, and passions ran higher, and far more seriously, than they have on this occasion. Nigel Lawson had his Budget speech interrupted, and the House was suspended because of disorder, when he tried to cut the taxes on the higher paid.
I had merely one defeat on a Finance Bill. I lost to a rebellion on the Floor of the House. My mitigation was that it was not my proposal—it was Norman Lamont who proposed VAT on domestic fuel—although I still think it was perfectly sensible. I immediately came back with more tax proposals to get the revenue I had lost, but my right hon. Friend is quite right to wait for events between now and the autumn statement and then to continue the fiscal discipline he has rightly maintained so far.
Geraint Davies
The right hon. and learned Gentleman probably knows that the Royal College of Physicians has announced that 40,000 people are dying a year, at a cost of £20 billion, from diesel emissions and pollution. Does he think the Chancellor should reconsider promoting green transport, public health and savings and rebalancing the tariffs on electric, diesel, hydrogen and petrol in order to save lives and money?
Mr Clarke
We have been extremely active on that front, but scientific knowledge is moving on. I remember when diesel was positively subsidised by Governments because it was thought to be more environmentally friendly. In a more appropriate debate, those issues are well worth pursuing. I understand the problem. I turn to what the Chancellor has to devote himself to: the Budget judgment and its implications for the economy. The Chancellor accepted, as he has to, that that is his principal responsibility. The Chancellor has the most difficult job in government, because he has to spend all his time challenging all the lobbies that demand extra expenditure and challenging his colleagues to find savings or improvements in the budgets of their Departments in order to close the gap.
What this Chancellor has not done is take a short-term view at any stage. That is why he has achieved such remarkable economic success. What I liked about his Budget speech was when he stressed how it was for future generations. What he said a few moments ago—a soundbite, if I may say so, which I had not heard before: there is no social justice without sound finance—is one of the best summations of one nation Conservatism I have heard for a very long time.
Mr Speaker
Let me say to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that he has never been in trouble with the Speaker.
Mr Clarke
I am trying to be reasonably concise rather than too expansive. I apologise to the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz).
I tried to think of what I would have done had I been Chancellor in the present situation. Before the Budget was delivered, I expected a much tougher Budget. Thank the Lord that I am not in my right hon. Friend’s position; I never had to face problems of the kind that he inherited from his predecessor. My instincts are classic, traditional stuff for anyone for whom the iron of the Treasury has entered the soul. This is the first Budget after an election, we have not made fast enough progress in eliminating the deficit and debt, and we will not have sound future progress with a modern rebalanced economy unless we have done that, so my first thoughts would have been to get on with it.
I would have introduced a Budget, as I frequently did in my time, raising taxes and cutting public expenditure. I am glad to hear, for reasons that I shall return to later, that my right hon. Friend has committed himself to his continuing long-term objective, and has decided to pause. I thought this was going to be a popular Budget. People speculate as to why we chose an easier path. [Interruption.] The Chancellor has in the short term relaxed fiscal policy. It is good that the Bank of England is retaining a very relaxed monetary policy, but it will tighten it if we were to abandon fiscal discipline. In the short term, my right hon. Friend has lowered taxation and lowered Department spending targets for cuts. He has eased off on public spending and lowered taxation. I was surprised by that.
I assume that this was partly caused by the considerable uncertainty that the economy faces. No one has addressed that issue in any of these debates, although the Chancellor did in his Budget speech. The global economy is slowing down, and mainly as a consequence of that, the British economy is slowing down. The uncertainties for our economic prospects over 2016 are very concerning. There are many uncertainties, all of which would threaten most of the developed economies if things go wrong. We still do not know whether China, for example, is going to achieve a soft landing; I think it will. In the emerging markets—there are associated problems with emerging market debt—there is volatility and some unsoundness in the financial world.
And there is the risk of Brexit. I am very glad that the Governor of the Bank of England decided to reassure people by setting out publicly that he was prepared to take action if we had a flight of capital from this country should people be alarmed about the referendum. So far, such risk has led only to a big decline in the value of sterling and the freezing of most people’s investment plans. One would be a bit of an idiot to invest in the British economy in anything that had the slightest risk when we do not know what the circumstances and trading patterns are going to be in six months’ time.
I assume one reason why my right hon. Friend took a more relaxed view than a traditional Chancellor would have done and did not make those big spending cuts or increase taxation—in fact, he eased taxation for businesses and the low-paid—was to avoid the mistake of being too severe when circumstances might well worsen as the year goes on. That underlines the point that, in the long term, one cannot forecast and fix these kind of things further forward.
A great deal of the debate around the Budget centred on the forecasts and the Office for Budget Responsibility. The fact that the OBR’s forecasts keep changing so rapidly just underlines what I am saying about the uncertainties for the immediate future. Fortunately, thanks to my right hon. Friend, the British economy has been the fastest growing developed economy in the last 12 months, and we are probably less at risk than most others. However, the fact remains that this was a time to be cautious. Personally, I would have maintained the squeeze—it has all been put off until the latter half of this Parliament, and into the next if we are not careful—because so long as the economy continues to grow, and there is a reasonable prospect that it will, we should not be running a deficit of this percentage of GDP, piling up more debt for our successors.
My doubt is whether this pause was totally justified. I accept that it probably was; but certainly we must resume things. I listened to a shadow Chancellor who plainly does not have an idea in his head about how he would save any money or do anything other than continue spending and borrowing. It is totally profligate stuff, as we have seen very much in the past.
I am very glad that my right hon. Friend made the changes to business taxation. When I was in office, I put up taxes, but I never put up business taxes because I was trying to encourage growth. We still need to make our economy stronger, so it is welcome that the Chancellor stepped in, keeping our corporation tax level at a competitive rate. I particularly welcome the help he has given to small and medium-sized businesses. Encouraging business is, of course, the best way of protecting ourselves against economic risks for the future in this uncertain world.
My right hon. Friend has not been wholly generous towards big business. He and the Government have been leading in the OECD on attempts to tackle the problem of tax evasion and tax avoidance on the part of big multinational companies. He has incorporated the first serious attempt for a long time to attack the problems of tax relief on interest when it is exploited and misused, on royalties and on past losses. I get told a lot about how the Chancellor should be collecting more from big international companies, but no Government have done a blind thing about tackling this tax avoidance for the past 20 years. This Government are leading international discussion towards agreement, which is what is needed, and in this Budget, the Chancellor has started to act.
We are told that we are relieving tax on the rich, but everybody knows—I certainly know, and not just from the newspapers—that the Treasury has been looking at the idea of doing more on tax relief for the wealthy when they contribute to their pension funds. If they have very high earnings, tax relief on pension funds is the way of avoiding tax and it is a great way of ensuring that 45% tax is not paid on a very considerable part of one’s income. That was the case, but we have now put a cap on it. I feel that we are still rather too generous, but in today’s politics that was another lobby, and when someone leaked it, it was seen off by the pensions industry in about 10 days flat. So my right hon. Friend was not allowed—on that occasion, I suspect, because of fear about what would happen on this side of the House—to proceed with fairly modest changes in tax relief for the rich.
As far as other tax moves that my right hon. Friend has made, on personal allowances and the thresholds for the higher rate, because the higher paid—the rich—now pay such a huge proportion of tax, it is almost impossible for Chancellors to ease the tax burden on the low-paid and the ordinary citizen without it being possible to demonstrate mathematically that they have done quite a lot for the rich as well. If Chancellors bought that argument every year, they would never move the threshold at which people start to pay tax, and they would never raise the 40% rate for the people who are currently in modest jobs and find that they are subject to a marginal rate of 40% because Gordon Brown started the habit of freezing the threshold in order to secure stealth taxation. Raising these thresholds is welcome, and I am glad that my right hon. Friend felt able to do it.
Other measures should be seriously canvassed. The pensioner benefits, to which I am entitled, are discussed every now and again. I am always told that we have put things in a manifesto, but I have yet to meet a candidate or an elector who read the last general election manifesto, which, although it seems to contain considerable detail, was certainly not crucial to my constituency victory, or, I suspect, to anyone else’s. We have ruled out ever raising income tax, ever raising national insurance, ever raising VAT; we appear to have ruled out doing anything at all that would stop the very wealthiest people having free bus passes and receiving the winter fuel allowance. I am not going to advocate the breaking of manifesto pledges, but I know of no prosperous pensioners, and certainly none who are in full-time employment like me, who would object to, at the very least, those benefits being made taxable.
I think that there is a case for considering those measures and various alternatives, but I will not risk going into it any further, first for reasons of time, and secondly because, given today’s populist politics, I fear that if I do, some lobby yet unknown to me will descend on me in the next two or three days in order to mount a campaign, through our ridiculous media, to blow that case out of the water.
Of course we must judge the Budget on its own merits, and I understand why my right hon. Friend has got to where he is. No two Chancellors have ever done the same in respect of every measure. Within our system, a Chancellor makes an overall judgment, and this Chancellor retains my full confidence: I am prepared to support his judgment.
I have another reason for supporting my right hon. Friend’s judgment. As I have already said, the present Government are in a strange position. Absolutely no alternative proposition is being advanced by anyone outside. Some pundits, and, as a result, some politicians, seem to believe that we are wrong to maintain our target of a balanced budget over the cycle, or however we choose to put it. They suggest that, actually, there are no problems, and the answer is simply always to run a deficit, on and on and on. After all, it is free money. It is a bit troublesome that interest rates might return to normality one day, but meanwhile, just let it pile up: it will sort itself out.
People on the far right say “Tax cuts, that is all you want. Tax cuts will inspire such tremendous entrepreneurship that jobs will be created, wealth will be created, and it will all be paid back. You will not be in debt for long.” On the left, the argument is “Boost every welfare payment, increase public spending on every public service, and that will generate such demand from the grateful taxpayer recipients that they will pump it into the economy, and it will pay for itself.” That is Mickey Mouse economics, as practised by the last Labour Government, and it got us into this trouble that we are still—thanks to my right hon. Friend—getting out of now.
As for my final reason for backing my right hon. Friend’s judgment, his record, after eight Budgets and six years, is absolutely amazing. I must concede, having been one of his competitors at one point, that he is far the most successful departmental Minister in this Government to date. If anyone had said, when he took over the state of affairs that he took over more than eight Budgets ago, that he would stand here, in charge of the fastest growing economy in the developed world, with near-full employment and with employment at record-breaking heights, able to demonstrate the steadily improving state of not only the public finances but the condition of the poor, as well as the alleviation of social problems across the country, that person would not have been believed. It is a quite remarkable performance.
So I back my right hon. Friend’s judgment. I am also delighted that he is helping us all to avert the risk of Brexit in the forthcoming referendum, because, if the public were so ill advised to vote for it, that would be the only thing that could really send this economic recovery off the rails in a big way.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. Before I call the spokesman for the Scottish National party, it may be convenient for the House to know that, owing to the level of demand among those wishing to contribute to the debate, a five-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches will have to take effect immediately after his own speech.
George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)
Let me begin by associating the SNP with the words of the Chancellor and the shadow Chancellor in expressing sympathy for the people of Belgium—Flemish, Walloon, and recent immigrants—at this tragic hour.
I must give the Chancellor his due. He gave us a bravura performance: in my view, a more assured and more interesting performance than we were given last week. However, I am always worried when he goes into his expansive, emotional mode. What is he hiding? We know what he hid last week, which was the fact that he would have to come back and tear up his Budget and create a new one, but what did he hide this week? He hid what he always hides and never addresses: the crucial issue of productivity. Without productivity growth, there can be no tax growth, no jobs growth and no wage growth. The truth is that, under this Chancellor, productivity has risen at an annual average of 0.1%. Since the top of the boom in 2007, the cumulative increase in UK productivity has been less than 1%. That is the Chancellor’s failure.
I have great respect for the Chancellor, but he is not a Chancellor who ever had a real job. He is not a Chancellor who ever worked in the private sector. He is not a Chancellor who ever had to lie awake at night—as I have, and as, I am sure, have many other Members on both sides of the House—and worry about how to pay the next wage bill. This Chancellor is an intellectual Chancellor: that is his problem.
Chris Philp
I have spent the last 15 years setting up and running businesses. As someone who has done that, I am glad that it is this Chancellor who is sitting in that seat, because he is the man who has created jobs and helped businesses like mine! [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. May I just say, for the benefit of the House, that moderation and good humour are the precepts of “Erskine May”. Members on both sides of the House can learn from the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who has just given a textbook example of a robust speech made with good humour. Many Opposition Members can do the same, and new Members could learn from them.
George Kerevan
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I serve on the Treasury Committee with the hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), and I did not take what he said personally.
If we do not get productivity, what happens? We do not get growth. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) gave us a wise presentation, as he normally does, but he slipped up a little. He said that, under this Chancellor, the United Kingdom had experienced the fastest growth in the developed world. That is not true. As he phrased it, it is not true—unless, of course, Australia is not developed; unless, of course, the United States is not developed; unless, of course, Sweden is not developed; unless, of course, Korea is not developed; unless, of course, Spain is not developed. All those countries experienced faster GDP growth than the UK in 2015, largely because they experienced faster productivity growth. That is what this Chancellor has not delivered. That is not what this Budget contains. And that is this Budget’s weakness.
If we look at the failure of productivity growth in the UK under this Chancellor, we see that productivity is lagging in practically every commercial and industrial sector. Crucially, productivity has been falling by an average of 1% a year in the financial services industry—our flagship industry, our key service industry, the industry that is leading our service exports. This Chancellor has devoted a lot of time and effort to reconstructing the financial services sector—I grant him that—but what have we got? Falling productivity. According to the Office for National Statistics, productivity in the British financial sector, including insurance, is now behind the level of financial services productivity in France and Italy. That is not a great record, Chancellor. Here is the bottom line: if we do not have productivity growth, the cash economy will not grow, wages will not grow and income to the Treasury will therefore not grow.
Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman not recognise that there is a lot in this Budget to improve the performance of the economy? Does he not agree that a massive cut in business rates will deliver exactly the productivity that he is talking about?
George Kerevan
I utterly accept that point. This is at the core of what I am saying. The kind of business rate cuts for small companies that the Chancellor has belatedly introduced in this Budget have long been available in Scotland. What has happened to productivity in Scotland? Despite the Scottish Government’s limited drivers for economic growth, productivity in Scotland has gone up 4.4% since the recession. That is more than four times what this Chancellor has managed to deliver. In Scotland, our limited tax powers have forced us to concentrate on the supply side, and my bill of fare against the Chancellor is that he does not do that. Yes, there are lots of bits and pieces in the Budget that I welcome—particularly the move to clamp down on transfer pricing in multinational companies—but in the end, there is no strategy. The Chancellor has no strategy apart from his rendezvous with 2020 and trying to run a budget surplus.
Sammy Wilson
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that he is perhaps being a bit harsh? There are many supply-side measures in this Budget, including improved investment in infrastructure and the digital economy and cuts in corporation tax and business rates, all of which should help investment and therefore increase productivity.
George Kerevan
Indeed, and I welcome all the supply-side measures, but—[Interruption.] Wait for it! We have had five Budgets in the past 15 months. Why did those measures not appear in the last four of them? In fact, if we count today as well as last week, we have had six Budgets in that time. Why did those measures not appear before? This is not about the Treasury officials, who are bright men and women; this is about the fact that there is no strategy apart from trying to run a budget surplus in a particular year, because the Chancellor knows that if he does not deliver in 2020, what is left of his reputation after this week will be in shreds.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
I should like to draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to page 2 of the Red Book. It states:
“This is precisely why the UK has been working through its long-term economic plan. Since 2010 the plan has been focussed on reducing the deficit, while delivering the supply side reforms necessary to improve long-term productivity growth.”
Will he at least concede that the Chancellor has in his Red Book precisely the kind of strategy that he is criticising him for not possessing?
George Kerevan
I cannot accept that. There is a tension in the Chancellor’s mind. It is like good and evil sitting on either shoulder. One side is telling him to run a budget surplus, because that is an easy road to take. That is not badly thought out. Given the number of rules that Chancellors have thought up over the years and then failed to implement, running a budget surplus is an extremely simple rule. It is just too crude, however. That argument vies with the supply-side strategy.
Following on from the question from the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), another friend from the Treasury Select Committee, let us look at what the Office for Budget Responsibility says in its report about how the Budget supply-side measures will work. It states:
“We also expect smaller positive contributions to potential output growth over the next five years from population growth, while average hours worked are expected to trend down over time.”
With a decrease in average hours, in input and in population growth, where is the productivity increase going to come from? I should like to hear the answer from the Chancellor.
Geraint Davies
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we have such hopeless productivity growth because, first, our research and development is very low, by international standards, and secondly, so is infrastructure investment? Thirdly, the rights and security of people in work are now low, making it easier for them to be sacked. In Germany, where people can stay in work, employers have to invest in their productivity because they cannot get rid of them. Here, however, we are destroying rights and creating short-term, low-paid jobs, which is resulting in lower productivity.
George Kerevan
I could not agree more with all three points, so I will just accept them.
The Red Book also shows that public sector net investment—capital investment in the public sector—is set to fall for the next four years. I have to ask Conservative Members this question. With industry in trouble and manufacturing contracting, as it has done in the past quarter, how will it help productivity if we have to cut public sector net investment in the capital side of the economy in order for the Chancellor to meet his rendezvous with destiny in 2020 and have his budget surplus? We need investment in capital in order to have productivity—that is where it comes from.
It is interesting to see what the OBR thinks we will have to do in order to get the books to balance. It believes that UK private sector business investment will have to make up the difference. It believes that private business investment will come to the rescue and contribute a quarter of the expenditure contribution to GDP growth in the period to 2020 in order to achieve the Chancellor’s fabled budget surplus. So, to make all the sums work, there has to be growth. Where is the growth coming from? According to the OBR, a quarter of all the potential expenditure in the economy between now and 2020 has to come from business investment. [Interruption.] Bear with me as I go through the numbers, because they are important. According to the OBR, business will have to contribute 0.6 percentage points each year to GDP in order for the economy to grow sufficiently to deliver the taxes to enable the Chancellor’s budget to come into balance.
There is only one problem. Historically, from 1990 to 2008—that is, throughout the boom period—the level of investment that British business managed to achieve as a percentage of GDP annually was 0.3, which is precisely half what the OBR thinks that business will have to invest between now and 2020 if the Chancellor’s numbers are to work. That is not going to happen.
David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman says that the Chancellor lacks strategy, but that is clearly not the case. He was clearly not listening to the same Budget speech that I was listening to. That speech included supply-side measures, with business taxes going down and infrastructure being improved. We are seeing massive Government investment in the northern powerhouse to tackle the challenges, and private sector investment is coming in on the back of it, including £1 billion of investment in Manchester airport over the next 10 years. Is not that the sort of leverage that the Government should be seeking?
George Kerevan
If the hon. Gentleman had been listening carefully instead of following his script, he would understand that I am in favour of all the supply-side measures that we can get, because that is how we get growth. I am simply pointing out that the Budget figures that we have been presented with in the Red Book, alongside the OBR’s independent analysis, suggest that business investment will have to be double the level of its historical average, at a time when the global economy is slowing, in order for the Budget numbers to work. That is not going to happen.
The hon. Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley) made a reasonable point, however, and I shall follow on from it by asking: how do we boost business investment? The Budget includes a cut in corporation tax, yet our rate is already the lowest in the G20. How can a further cut produce any more inward investment? The incentive is already the biggest it is going to be, so cutting it even more at the margins will not increase incentive. That will just waste funds. Even with that—I have raised this in the House before—because there is so little outlet for investment at the moment, much of companies’ profits from reduced corporation tax is going into share buy-backs, which is a complete waste of time because it does not add to productivity.
The other tax issue in the Budget is the cut in capital gains tax. There is an argument for cutting capital gains tax, but here’s the point: which Chancellor raised capital gains tax in 2010? It was the Chancellor who is sitting there. Where is the long-term plan in raising it and then lowering it? The confusion of signals is exactly why businesses are not investing. They do not know what taxes will be from one Budget to another, which, at the moment, is every three months. [Interruption.]
David Rutley
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I was not seeking to make a point, but I will now. The Chancellor has clearly demonstrated that he has his public finances under control—[Interruption.] The deficit is massively down and he is now in a position to take forward the changes to which the hon. Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan) refers.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
Order. The hon. Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan) has been on his feet for 15 minutes and is taking an awful lot of interventions—he is very generous like that —but over 40 Members want to speak and I do not think that I am going to get everybody in. If he limits the number of interventions he takes, I will be very grateful.
George Kerevan
As ever, Madam Deputy Speaker, I am at your service and the service of the House. I will come to my final point, because I am sure that we will be discussing this at the next Budget in another three months.
The Chancellor talks about living beyond our means. He prioritises the budget surplus. He talks about intergenerational fairness. He says that if we do not get overall national debt down, it will be a burden on future generations. Let us test that and go back to the late 1940s and 1950s, when the national debt as a share of GDP was more than twice what it is now and was coasting at over 200% at one point. For most of the ’50s it was 150%, which is twice what we have at the moment. Where did it come from? It came from Governments, particularly Conservative Governments, borrowing money. Most of the rise in national debt did not come during world war two, but during the late ’40s and early ’50s as we tried to rebuild Britain’s infrastructure following the depredation of the war. Harold Macmillan was building a million houses a year. We invested and the national debt was pushed up.
Here is the thing: if huge national debts weigh heavily on future generations, let us look forward. What happened to baby boomers such as the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe and me? Our generation has houses and pensions. We have benefited from state-funded investment in national infrastructure. The whole notion that investing and running up a budget deficit places a burden on future generations is not historically true. Did the economy grow fast in the ’50s and early ’60s? Yes, it did.
Here is my final point and my message for the Chancellor to reflect on: when trying to control public spending, what matters is what it is spent on. Harold Macmillan and the Conservative Governments of the 1950s invested in infrastructure. This Chancellor is borrowing to invest in current spending, which gets blown away by the wind, and if we do that, we fail. It is no wonder that the Chancellor wants his rendezvous with destiny in 2020. He wants to pretend that he can run a budget surplus. It may never happen. Even if it does for one year, it is unsustainable. The Chancellor does not understand business or how the economy works. He pretends he does and talks a good game, but he has not delivered productivity, which is the core thing that we need in this country.
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan), who always speaks so eloquently, but I must say that I disagree with absolutely every word he said. Boosting productivity is at the heart of this Government’s Budget, which is plain for everybody to see. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) said that the global economy is slowing down and that we need to be fighting fit for the future. This Budget will help put Britain in that place.
I pay tribute to the Chancellor for delivering such a strong Budget, but what we should all do first is pay tribute to our nation’s wealth creators. It is they, not us sitting here in Parliament, who have put Britain back on top with one of the world’s strongest economies. They are the farmers whom I met last week in Hampshire. They are the partners who run the new John Lewis store in my constituency. They are small and medium-sized businesses up and down the country. They are people like Beryl Huntingdon, who runs Absolutely Offices, or Graham Murphy, who runs RDT. They are the people, innovators and entrepreneurs putting Britain back on top. We must acknowledge their immense hard work in getting our country into the position it is now in.
Mrs Miller
If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I want to make progress because of the number of people who want to contribute.
The Government have recognised their role in creating the right conditions for business success. They have created an environment in which businesses feel confident about investing by putting in place the right reductions in business and job taxes to encourage growth and success. They have put in place the right infrastructure investment—the £100 billion going into infrastructure over this Parliament, including Crossrail 2, which will do so much to reduce pressure on other parts of the rail network, such as the Wessex route, which affects many hon. Members and is well over capacity. The Budget is also investing in people, underlined by the commitment to 3 million new apprenticeships by 2020, including 5,000, some of which will be degree level, in my constituency at the Basingstoke College of Technology.
People are the biggest asset of most organisations. According to the CBI, some of the biggest challenges facing business in the UK today are retaining top talent and getting appropriately skilled staff. We may have record employment levels, which is to be applauded, and the highest number of women in work, but if we are to be fighting fit for the future, we must get the best out of every single member of our community. While much has been done, there is still more to do, particularly on women’s role in the workforce.
Record numbers of women are in work and the Chancellor is to be congratulated on that, particularly because of the investment he secured for doubling the amount of free childcare. There are 2 million women who would like to be in work and 1 million working women who would like to work more, but they cannot find the right jobs. Some 41% of women in this country work part time, many because they cannot get hold of the right flexible work that fits around their family and caring responsibilities. I gently draw the Chancellor’s attention to the second report of the Women and Equalities Committee, which is all about one of the Government’s great aspirations: to eliminate the gender pay gap in a generation. We can do that if all jobs are more flexible, if men are better able to share care in their family life, and if there are national pathways for women to get back into work.
I also draw the Chancellor’s attention to an Equality and Human Rights Commission report, published today, on the level of maternity discrimination that 77% of pregnant mothers and people on maternity leave are enduring. We are not making the best use of women in this country, and I would like the Government to pledge to take active steps to change the situation, so that all women can do a job that they want to do in order to make the biggest contribution they can to boosting productivity in this country.
Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)
I rise to speak to amendment (a), tabled in my name and those of the hon. Members for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) and for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland). I served on the Finance Bill Committee with the hon. Member for Glasgow Central last year, and it was during that Bill’s passage that she and I first tabled amendments on this issue. I hope that we will finally see them reflected in legislation this year.
I thank the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, who, as a Government Back Bencher, co-sponsored the amendment, and my right hon. and hon. Friends who have given their support, but it is the campaigning work of so many others outside this Chamber that has driven us forward, including more than 300,000 people who signed Laura Coryton’s petition on the issue. The campaign against the tampon tax will serve as an inspiration. It is an example of how grassroots campaigns and Back-Bench Members can make a positive change at the highest level.
It is one of the absurdities of our tax regime that tampons and sanitary towels are treated as luxuries, when periods are simply a fact of life for women. Last week, we heard appalling reports from food banks about how women, who were unable to afford tampons, were resorting to using newspapers and socks.
Mrs Miller
Will the hon. Lady join me in thanking the Financial Secretary, who is in his place, for all his hard work in taking the fight directly to the European Union and in negotiating the change that the Government have put on the table today?
Paula Sherriff
I do thank the Financial Secretary in the same way that I thank everybody who has supported this long-standing campaign.
It cannot be acceptable that women are having to use socks and newspapers as a substitute for sanitary protection. I hope that, as well as cutting prices across the board, we can ensure that all women have access to the protection that they need.
This campaign is not just about money. It is about time that we removed the stigma attached to the basic facts of women’s lives. The Prime Minister said yesterday that he will always remember explaining this issue to the 27 Heads of Government at the European Council. The fact that they had to address this issue directly is itself a great step forward for women.
I am glad that the Government have now taken on board the campaign’s message. It makes me the first Opposition Back-Bench MP successfully to move an amendment to a Budget resolution. If nothing else, I will at least achieve lasting fame as a parliamentary pub quiz answer. That does not mean that our work is done here. There are a couple of outstanding issues that I hope the Minister can address.
Most pressingly, there is the question over what will happen to those women’s charities that have benefited from the tampon tax fund since the autumn statement back in November. I hope the Minister will confirm today that even after the tax is scrapped he will continue to provide the financial support that they so desperately need.
We will also need to take the final step by legislating for the measure the Finance Bill, and at European level. It would be fitting if this House could pass those amendments before the referendum in June, and I hope that the Minister can commit to that timetable today. On the latter point, I hope that he will be back at the Dispatch Box tomorrow with the expected announcement of the EU VAT action plan.
There is also a challenge to ensure that women get the full benefit of the tax cut, and that the cut does not simply result in increased profits for the manufacturers and retailers of sanitary products. I am writing to them on that matter myself, and I encourage the Government to join me. Those companies might be able to provide part of the answer to the issue of future funding for women’s charities. I hope that it would not be too much of a test of our powers of persuasion to encourage them to advertise women’s charities on their packaging, and make donations themselves. Women have no choice but to pay companies for their products, and I hope that those companies will make the choice to help pay for our services.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
I thank my honourable sister for giving way on this point. I thank her for her support and for the work that we have done on this. I fully support what she is suggesting about the charitable giving from the sale of packets of tampons and sanitary towels. Does she accept that the definition of sanitary products needs to be widened slightly to cover items such as breast pads for mothers who breast feed, maternity pads for women who have just had children and incontinence pads, which are not always available to people free of VAT?
Paula Sherriff
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, and I very much look forward to campaigning with her on the issues that she has just mentioned.
This evening we have the opportunity to put right an historical injustice by making clear our intent to abolish VAT on female sanitary products. The amendment allows us to do just that, and I hope that the whole House will support it.
Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this very important debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff), to whom I pay tribute. Given the mark that she has made on this place—I am pretty sure that I speak for the whole House in this regard—she will be more than just an answer in a future pub quiz. It is also a pleasure to follow my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). He is certainly still a big beast. He was a big beast in the Treasury and he is now turning out to be a bit of a national treasure on the Government Benches.
This Budget puts the next generation first—I have to declare an interest here, as I have three young children—and it continues our long-term plan to reduce the deficit and achieve a surplus, and sets out the long-term solutions to long-term problems to ensure that Britain is in a strong economic position for the future.
Thanks to the work of my constituency neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, Britain is set to be the fastest-growing economy in the G7, with the Office for Budget Responsibility predicting growth rates in excess of 2% for the remainder of this Parliament. [Interruption.] We are still the envy of the European Union, and we are stronger together. The challenges that the country faces are growing: global stock markets have had the worst start to the year for 45 years, prospects for emerging markets have worsened, and the sharp fall in the price of oil and commodities has contributed to lower global growth.
Eight years ago, the UK was one of the worst prepared countries to face the financial crisis. Today, it is one of the best prepared. We have fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Against that backdrop of global uncertainty, this Budget delivers security for hard-working taxpayers. Small businesses are the engine room of our country. They account for 99% of all private sector businesses, employing 15 million people—60% of all private sector employment. The combined annual turnover of SMEs was £1.8 trillion last year, nearly half of all private sector turnover in the United Kingdom.
Along with many small businesses across Weaver Vale, I welcomed the announcement in last week’s statement that business rate relief would be doubled permanently. Businesses with a rateable value of £12,000 and below will receive 100% relief. Some 600,000 small businesses across the country will now pay no business rates whatsoever.
Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Ind)
On that point, I also welcome the fact that, from 2017, 600,000 small businesses will be taken out of business rates, but it does not happen for a year. Retail business rate relief, which is worth £1,500, has also been abolished, but small shop owners will still have to pay that £1,500 for the next 12 months. Is that not disappointing?
Graham Evans
I bow to the greater knowledge of the hon. Gentleman, who does a great job as a small business owner in Rochdale. We cannot do everything at the same time, but overall I welcome this Budget. I am sure that he, too, welcomes the overall message to small businesses as they receive help with those reliefs.
Businesses with a property rateable value between £12,000 and £15,000 will receive tapered relief. Two thousand properties in Halton Borough Council and 7,000 properties in Cheshire West and Chester have a rateable value of below £15,000 and will all benefit substantially from the changes.
Building a northern powerhouse and rebalancing the national economy is a core part of this Government’s economic strategy. In 2015, over half a million more businesses were established outside London and the south-east than in 2010. A third of new businesses are in the northern powerhouse, and the overwhelming evidence is that those new businesses are creating more and more jobs.
In my constituency of Weaver Vale, unemployment is down by 57% since 2010. Almost three quarters of the growth in employment has been in full-time jobs, and real wages are rising strongly. Since 2010, there have been around 4,000 new housing starts in Cheshire West and Chester, and just under 2,000 new starts in the Halton and Runcorn area.
Nationally, housing starts are at their highest levels since 2008, and are up by 91% when compared with the low point in 2009. Local authorities will be able to access the £1.2 billion starter home land fund to help prepare more brownfield sites for starter homes, such as the legacy brownfield sites from ICI in Northwich in my constituency. This Government are helping generations of younger people in their 20s and 30s to buy their first home. Crucially, they are protecting our green belt while at the same time helping more young people to get on the property ladder.
The UK was the fastest growing major advanced economy in 2014, the second fastest in 2015 and it is forecast by the OECD to be the fastest growing in 2016. Under Labour, £1 in every £4 spent by the Government was borrowed, which was absolutely outrageous. Now it is £1 in every £14. The deficit has been cut by two thirds, and we will run a surplus by the end of this Parliament.
This Budget moves Britain from a high-tax, high-welfare, low-wage economy to a high-wage, low-tax, low-welfare economy. Next year, the long-awaited Mersey gateway bridge will be opened by a Conservative Government—and a Conservative Chancellor has made that happen. That reminds the world, if it ever needed reminding, that Great Britain and the north of England are open for business.
Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)
I would like, if I may, to advance the argument made by the hon. Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan) about the downgrading of productivity. Productivity was the central economic challenge of this Parliament—so said the Chancellor last year. A failure to address the productivity gap between ourselves and our main economic rivals would undermine our competitiveness and reduce living standards, so to address that, the Government published their productivity plan in July 2015.
In our inquiry into the plan—our first in this Parliament—my Select Committee found it to be somewhat worthy but vague, and without the firm delivery and implementation measures needed truly to address the productivity challenge. Of course, it is difficult for any Government to turn around something as substantial and structural as the productivity gap, especially only nine months after the publication of their report, but the downgrade to productivity in last week’s Budget reinforces the Committee’s view that although many measures in the plan were welcome, collectively they did not constitute a radical departure or step change that would really help to boost productivity. Crucially, as the OBR stated in its report last week:
“Lower productivity growth means lower forecasts for labour income and company profits, and thus also for consumer spending and business investment. In aggregate, this reduces tax receipts significantly.”
Productivity improvements require a long-term and sustained approach to business investment, yet the Red Book shows how much business investment—that engine that will power better competitiveness, increase wealth creation and employment generation and, ultimately, bring about higher wages and rising living standards—has stalled. Real business investment fell in the final quarter of last year. The manufacturing sector in our country is in recession. The OBR forecasts that business investment will be 2.6% in 2016, a massive 4.9 percentage points weaker than only four months ago at the time of the autumn statement.
The Government are not helping through their policies. The Chancellor should be encouraging firms to invest in the latest technology, plant and machinery to ensure that they can compete with the most modern kit anywhere in the world, as well as investing in research and innovation to ensure that British-based firms are coming forward with the goods, services and products that the world wants to buy.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
Is that not exactly why the Chancellor has cut corporation tax and capital gains tax: to encourage companies of all sizes, particularly small and medium-sized businesses, to invest in research and development, new products and the jobs of the future?
Mr Wright
I would suggest that the approach on capital gains tax is contrary to having a long-term economic plan, as it encourages short termism—people do not scale up, but sell out quickly. That is a major structural concern.
To a large extent, the Chancellor has done positive things in this Parliament to encourage investment. In particular, the changes to the annual investment allowances are very welcome and will allow firms to invest with greater certainty. Other countries, however, are doing much more, and Britain risks missing out. Addressing the huge disincentive in business rates for firms wanting to invest in new plant and machinery should have been at the very top of the Chancellor’s list, and although the changes to business rates for small businesses were welcome and constituted the largest tax cut of this Budget, it seems ridiculous that the Chancellor did not resolve the ludicrous situation whereby a firm faces a larger tax bill in the form of higher business rates by choosing to invest in new plant and machinery. For a Government who pledged to do all they can to rebalance the economy towards manufacturing and specifically, in the past six or seven months or so, to help the hard-hit British steel industry, the omission of that single measure from the Budget was a significant blow for industry, particularly the steel industry, which wanted the Government to give a favourable signal to invest.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
It seems that there is only one club in the Conservative golf bag for tackling productivity, and that is tax alone. The Conservatives have to face up to infrastructure, to the low-wage economy and to the lack of housing. Owner occupancy is at a 20-year low and house building is low as well. Workers need houses, and if that growth does not happen, combined with infrastructure, productivity will remain low.
Mr Wright
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about infrastructure, and there was very little in the Budget to address that. Earlier, I mentioned the possibility of rebalancing. In 2012, we were promised an export-led recovery, and the Government announced proudly a target of £1 trillion of exports by 2020. I am all for ambition and for stretching targets, but given the Government’s limited ability to shift the needle on the value of exports by companies, that ambition seemed at best somewhat misplaced and, at worst, even very foolish.
The OBR stated last week that the Government will miss its target by 36%, which is £357 billion, and that net trade will actually be a drag on economic growth for every single year of this Parliament, but there was nothing in this Budget to boost exports. The word “exports” did not even pass the Chancellor’s lips in his statement on Wednesday and it was not mentioned again this morning. Does that mean that the Government have shelved that target? Will Ministers consider providing assistance and encouragement in the form of export vouchers so that firms from Britain can invest and export?
A further way to boost productivity is by investing in skills, and the flagship skills policy of this Government is the target of 3 million apprenticeships by 2020, funded through the apprenticeships levy. Now, only 2% of larger firms will pay that, so what will happen to the other 98% of firms, as well as the detail of the levy? We were promised by the Minister for Skills in the run-up to the Budget that all would be revealed, including this new shiny model, in the Chancellor’s Budget statement, but for a Budget billed as putting the next generation first, there was precious little detail about how the apprenticeships levy—only 12 months from its start—will operate in practice. As with exports, the word “apprenticeships” was not even mentioned by the Chancellor.
Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the biggest drags skillswise on productivity in our economy is at the intermediate and higher intermediate skill levels? We have had this problem for more than 30 years.
Mr Wright
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. My point is that by trying to ramp up the quantity of apprenticeships while making a major—possibly the major—change to the institutional architecture of apprenticeship delivery, the Government risk missing their target and that, as a result, the skills policy in this country will be affected adversely.
Budgets are rarely remembered past a couple of weeks or months. This one will be remembered, but for all the wrong reasons: incompetence, callousness, clumsiness and the resignation of a Cabinet Minister. It is also concerning that it will be remembered for downgraded productivity and a failure to address it, leading to lower economic growth, relatively falling living standards, lower tax receipts and deteriorating public finances. The Budget has helped to make this country somewhat poorer.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
I rise to support the Budget and, in particular, to welcome the Government’s supply-side reforms. This has been a dramatic Budget, and I would be failing the Government if I did not concentrate on the areas of drama. First, on the disability reforms, the challenge before the Government is clear: to deliver a policy that we can all be proud to defend in our constituencies and in front of any objective scrutiny. I do not think we would have been able to do that if the Government had not wisely made the decisions that they have over the past few days.
When I look at page 150 of the OBR’s report, on the successive forecasts for spending on disability benefits, I can see that the Government’s envelope within which to deliver this humane disability policy is very clear. When we came to power in 2010, the Government were spending £12 billion on disability benefits, which rose to £16 billion by now, which is an increase of a third. The figure is forecast, with the reversal of the PIP measures, to reach £18 billion by 2020-21. It is clear that the Government have an envelope within which to work to ensure that we have a world-class policy that any of us can defend, even in an environment of fierce and partisan political attack.
I signed the two amendments on VAT to highlight the extent to which VAT is controlled by our membership of the European Union. Neither amendment has legislative effect. I congratulate the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) on her amendment, which, as she said, makes clear our intent to zero rate tampons and other sanitary products. Of course, both amendments are pursuant to Government policy, and this is the bitter irony of our membership of the EU. We had to have a dramatic row over VAT in the context of an EU referendum in order to secure the following commitment from the European Council:
“The European Council notes that the Commission intends to publish shortly a communication on an action plan on VAT. It welcomes the intention of the Commission to include proposals for increased flexibility for Member States with respect to reduced rates of VAT, which would provide the option to Member States of VAT zero rating for sanitary products.”
That is welcome, and it is clear that the Government’s policy and the House’s wish is that sanitary products should be zero-rated. It is welcome that the Government have secured this change of EU policy but, particularly as a participant in the campaign, I do not want us to have an EU membership referendum every time we want a different policy on our second largest tax.
Mr Kenneth Clarke
Will my hon. Friend accept that British Governments have always supported the idea of having an EU framework on VAT? Otherwise, the problem is that there is pressure on Governments to compete with each other in lowering the tax on selected products when they think that their manufacturers or producers will benefit. Also, it is very difficult to operate an open trade area if everybody is going for competitively different tax rates. If we go too far down that path, the main beneficiaries are smugglers.
Mr Baker
My right hon. and learned Friend raises some interesting points and, although I am grateful for the additional minute for my speech that he has given me, I cannot touch on all of them. He illustrates the difficulty of operating a customs union among interventionist nation states. The old doctrines of liberalism did not require that one got rid of non-trade barriers, for the most part. There were no non-trade barriers because laissez-faire was the norm. I abridge an argument that could be made at much greater length, but at the heart of the exchange that we have just had is the difficulty involved in interventionist nation states attempting to engage in free trade. In a world of globalisation, air travel and the internet, we need some degree of harmonisation on a global scale, provided that that enjoys democratic consent. That is probably a subject for another debate, but I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for his intervention.
Until the VAT directive 2006/112/EC is changed, it will be technically unlawful under EU law for any amendment to be introduced in UK law, even if it is not applied and takes effect in the future. That is the situation that we face. It is similar to the situation concerning insulation products, on which a judgment in the European Court of Justice on 4 June 2015 ruled that
“The United Kingdom cannot apply, with respect to all housing, a reduced rate of VAT to the supply and installation of energy-saving materials, since that rate is reserved solely to transactions relating to social housing.”
That is the position in law while we are in the EU. Although I hear what my right hon. and learned Friend says, it is a fact that while we remain in the EU, we cannot control what is currently our second-biggest tax. I am grateful that we have had this opportunity to put this part of the EU membership debate on the public record and have it discussed in the media. I am particularly grateful that the Government will not be opposing either amendment. If there is a Division, I shall certainly vote for amendment (a) and I shall probably abstain on amendment (b).
Perhaps the most dramatic aspect of the Budget is a subject that I have talked about at every Budget. It is a subject that I mentioned in my maiden speech—the insane state of monetary policy all around the world. If the European Central Bank was printing €80 billion of new money every month in paper and shipping it around the continent in articulated lorries, it would already have destroyed faith in paper currency. Yet, because the process is one of buying Government and corporate bonds, we simply notice a recirculation of money and celebrate the coarse aggregate results. In 25 seconds, I cannot give a lecture on capital-based macro-economics—[Hon. Members: “Oh!”] If Opposition Members would like to call a Back-Bench debate on the subject in their own time, I would be glad to give them the lesson. I welcome this Budget, but its dramatic consequences will be felt much later as a result of easy money.
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
The Budget was a story of missed targets for the Chancellor and missed opportunities for our country and, like the Budget of 2012, it is rapidly turning into a total mess. I am pleased to see some of the U-turns, but much more is needed.
I associate myself with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), the Chair of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee. He spoke powerfully about the importance of rebalancing our economy. That is greatly needed, especially after some of the numbers we saw in the Budget last week. As a result of the lower productivity, the lower exports and the other things my hon. Friend spoke about, economic growth has been revised down for every single year of this Parliament. A staggering £71 billion has been knocked off our tax revenues. As a result, the Government are now set to borrow an extra £38 billion over the next five years. That is why, after breaking his promise to clear the deficit in the last Parliament, the Chancellor has now broken his pledge to bring the debt down as a share of GDP in this Parliament as well.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
Would the hon. Lady’s argument not have a lot more weight and credibility had her party—as she well knows because of her position on the Front Bench—not opposed every single one of the £83 billion-worth of welfare cuts that had to be made in the wake of the 2010 fiscal inheritance?
Rachel Reeves
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman still thinks we should go ahead with the cuts to personal independence payments. It certainly sounds like it from those remarks.
Let me deal with the specific issues surrounding personal independence payments and the impact that this Government have had on disabled people. While the fiasco is unfolding around us, let us remember the broader points. This is a Government—the Chancellor, the Prime Minister, the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the current Secretary of State for Work and Pensions—who forced through the bedroom tax, affecting 500,000 people, the majority of them disabled, by about £700 a year. This is the Government who forced through the closure of the independent living fund. This is the Government who forced through cuts to employment and support allowance only last summer, affecting 500,000 people and worth about £30 a week or £1,500 a year. The U-turn on personal independence payments, although welcome, deals with only a fraction of the damage and the pain that the Government have caused to disabled people in all our constituencies.
Let us be clear what this U-turn means. The new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions came to the Chamber yesterday and said that the Government are not going back to the welfare bill and to disabled people for further cuts. But in the course of yesterday’s statement, that was watered down a little. The Government now have “no plans” to come back to the welfare budget and disability benefits. That is reminiscent of when they had no plans to increase VAT and all the other things they had no plans to do, until they did them and until they hurt the people who least need to be hurt.
When the Chief Secretary winds up the debate this evening, I would like to hear whether there are no plans, or whether the Government can guarantee that there will be no further cuts to the welfare budget or to the benefits of disabled people. We know that there is a black hole of £4.4 billion in the public finances. If it is not the wealthy and not disabled people, who is going to pay the price? Are there going to be further cuts to education, health, defence and our police? Will there be further increases in taxes—on VAT and taxes for ordinary working people? Something has to give and we need some answers about the black hole in the Budget that we are voting on, although we do not know what it means. What does it mean for all those different groups of people?
As the Chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility told us at the Treasury Committee meeting this morning, the issue is not just that there is a £4.4 billion black hole in the social security budget, but that the Government have failed to meet their welfare cap. They are going to fail in every year of this Parliament, by a staggering £20 billion—£20 billion more on social security spending in this Parliament than the Government set out, a further black hole in their public finances. Why did they get into this mess in the first place? It is because they wanted to cut taxes for the wealthiest in society. They wanted to cut capital gains tax, increase the threshold before people started paying the 40p rate of tax, and increase the ISA limit from £15,000 to £20,000 so that we can all save the full £20,000 a year tax free. That is great for those who have the money, but most of our constituents are lucky to earn £20,000 a year, let alone put it away in savings. That is why the Government raided the social security budget yet again to give tax cuts to their friends, the wealthiest and the most privileged in our society.
Last week’s Budget could have been different. For example, the Government could have put more money into infrastructure investment. In my constituency, we are paying a heavy price for the floods on 26 December. The Chancellor said earlier that I should have welcomed the money for flood defences, but in 2011 the Government cancelled a flood defence scheme in Leeds worth £135 million. Last week, they announced £35 million for Leeds. Well, I am sorry for not thanking the Chancellor, but an offer of £35 million rather than £135 million is not really worth the thanks, and the businesses in my constituency will pay a heavy price if the rains come again.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I was with the Environment Agency just last night, and it told me it will not have sufficient funds to put in place measures—particularly catchment management measures —to prevent future flooding.
Rachel Reeves
Last week, the Government announced £150 million for York, Calder Valley, Leeds and Cumbria. However, as I said, the scheme that was cancelled in Leeds was worth £135 million, and that £150 million is for flood defences, flood resilience and flood maintenance. Yet again, the Government are short-changing people who need them to step up to the mark, as our volunteers in York and Leeds and across the north of England did when the rains fell, the rivers rose and buildings—houses and businesses—were flooded.
Last week’s Budget could have been different. It could have been a different Budget for disabled people. It could have been a Budget that helped ordinary working people and the most vulnerable in our society. It could have been a Budget that put money into the northern powerhouse and the infrastructure that we need. However, it was a different Budget, because this Government have different priorities. That is why we need a Labour Government on the side of ordinary working people and the most vulnerable in our society.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
The hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) made a strong case, but, unfortunately, it is desperately flawed. As she knows, the fact of the matter is that, in the 13 years of the Labour Government, the gap between the richest 10% and the poorest 10% widened. During her party’s period in government, we had record numbers of children in workless households, and unemployment, including youth unemployment, rose.
Graham Evans
My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. During 13 years of Labour, many gaps were created, but particularly the north-south divide. Does he therefore welcome the Chancellor’s announcement of the High Speed 3 line from Manchester to Leeds, which will significantly cut train times—by 30 minutes?
Mr Jackson
I do. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The fact of the matter is that this Government are taking the difficult decisions on infrastructure—on things such as nuclear power and airport capacity.
Mr Jackson
I will not at the moment, but I might later.
The previous Labour Government, in very benign economic circumstances—mainly driven, of course, by debt and borrowing—failed to take those decisions.
I welcome the Budget in general terms—of course, I took issue with the Chancellor’s comments about Brexit, and I think the OBR’s anodyne comments on Brexit were misrepresented. However, there were some good things in the Budget, which was not a redistributive Budget from poor to rich, but largely a redistributive-neutral Budget, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies said.
Mr Jackson
I will not at the moment.
I welcome the lifetime ISA. I welcome the tax crackdown on offshore property developers and transfer pricing. It was good to see the changes in the personal allowance, which will take many of my constituents out of tax.
Indeed, my constituency is in a very fortunate position, and I pay tribute to the Chancellor for delivering nothing short of a jobs miracle. We have seen the largest reduction in youth unemployment in the history of my seat—and probably in England as a whole—at over 70%, and there has been a more than 60% reduction in adult unemployment. We also have record numbers of apprenticeships. That is taking people out of poverty. That is the great record of this Government.
The decision to resile from the commitment on PIP was absolutely right. There is a moral, social equity issue—[Hon. Members: “A U-turn.”] It is a U-turn—that was well spotted by Labour Members. However, it was absolutely right to make that decision. It was right for my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) to point up the juxtaposition of tax reductions for well-off people and the change in PIP. However, it ill behoves Labour Members to lecture the Government, when they voted against every welfare change in the last Parliament. What would they have done, and what would they do now? It is incumbent on the Opposition to come through with a coherent, comprehensive alternative on fiscal policy, public expenditure and tax.
Let me raise two issues that have caused me some concern with the Budget. The problem the Government have encountered, which we have discussed over the last few days, has given rise to a proper debate about intergenerational fairness. We need to look again at pensioner benefits. We cannot discuss welfare without looking at things such as the triple lock and pensioners benefits. I rarely agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), but he is absolutely right that we cannot see these things in a vacuum, and it is important that we look again at means-testing and pensioner benefits. It is morally wrong to make large transfers of wealth from the young to the old. There has to be a consensus on this issue.
One suggestion I would make is that, if we are going to means-test pensioner benefits, we should perhaps link that to the most acute societal issue we have at the moment, which is adult social care. We should have co-ordination and integration between acute district hospitals and the provision of care and housing for older people. I think there are older pensioners who would understand that, and it is something the Treasury needs to go forward with and look at very seriously.
The second concern is that, as we speak, Cambridgeshire County Council—it is not my local authority, because Peterborough City Council is a unitary authority—is looking at the devolution plans for East Anglia. At the moment, those do not stack up. We have not had enough information—in some senses, I am reprising the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Sir Henry Bellingham) yesterday—and we need more. The proposal has been rushed to get it in the Budget statement. It needs to be finessed. We need to carry businesses with us. Neither local enterprise partnership agrees with it. The majority of councils are, at best, ambivalent, and that includes Cambridge City Council, which has rejected it. We need to look at this proposal again.
Mr Jackson
I will not at the moment.
It may be that there are synergies between Lowestoft and Peterborough, or between Norwich and Ipswich, but I have yet to see them. Let us have more information about funding, governance, infrastructure spending, the role of an executive mayor and what will happen to the existing local government structure. I am not against this in principle, but we cannot promise £30 billion of spending over the next 30 years without more facts. We need to see those, and that is the challenge I give to those on the Treasury Front Bench.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
We learned many things from last week’s Budget, and we have learned perhaps even more from the fallout since. However, the overriding message we seem to be getting is that, six years into his job, the Chancellor cannot keep a promise and does not seem to learn from his past shambolic Budget mistakes. He promised to balance the books by last year, to get debt falling as a percentage of GDP each year and to keep welfare spending within his welfare cap, but on virtually all of his own fiscal targets, as the independent Office for Budget Responsibility confirmed last week, he has failed to deliver.
Of course, this Government’s shortcomings go much further than the Chancellor’s own meaningless targets. A mere six months ago, the Prime Minister told his party conference that he would govern according to “one nation, modern, compassionate” Conservatism. This is the same Prime Minister who last week cheered on a Budget that cut capital gains tax, raised the threshold for the 40p rate, further cut corporation tax, and would see the poorest losing about £1,500 a year in the next few years while some of the richest gain £200. To top it off, the Chancellor pledged to slash disability benefits by up to £1.3 billion a year, which the OBR estimated would lead to some 370,000 disabled people losing an average of £3,500 a year.
Robert Jenrick
I want to give some context on the important point about capital gains tax that is being made by the Opposition. Jim Callaghan created capital gains tax when he was Chancellor in 1965, but it has always been lower under Labour Chancellors than under Conservative Chancellors. Even after this change, capital gains tax will be 2% higher under this Chancellor than it was under Alistair Darling, and indeed Gordon Brown in the previous Labour Government.
Catherine McKinnell
I do not understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. He is digressing on details of capital gains tax when the point I am clearly making is about the context in which the cut has been made, where the burden of this Budget very much falls on the poorest and the most vulnerable in our society. If that is compassionate Conservatism, bring the nasty party back!
I am pleased and relieved that the Government have backed down on this issue within less than a week. However, I am angry that those people who rely on the personal independence payment, including 1,100 people in Newcastle upon Tyne North, have endured days and weeks of huge anxiety about how they would cope if this level of support was cut. It is unforgivable. I remain equally concerned about how the existing reforms to PIP are quite clearly failing disabled people. Constituents continue to get in touch with me following my recent question to the Prime Minister because they have been told that they are no longer eligible for a Motability vehicle despite its clearly being the only means by which they can leave the house, or indeed get to work. The new PIP assessment is fundamentally flawed. I strongly urge the Work and Pensions Secretary and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to revisit this issue with fresh eyes and look at reforming the current PIP changes before they embark on any further welfare reform.
Despite the Chancellor’s so-called
“revolution in the way we govern England”,
with the pledge last May to give local areas greater control over local transport, housing, skills and healthcare, it appears that he does not place the same faith in local communities when it comes to our schools. Last week’s Budget confirmed that, far from handing control to local communities, the Government are about to embark on the greatest ever centralisation of our schools system, which will see an end to the role, now a century old, of democratically accountable local authorities as the stewards of our children’s education. My Front-Bench colleagues have already highlighted the glaring black hole in the finances of this plan—£560 million—which raises questions about the extent to which the schools budget will be raided to make up the shortfall.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
My hon. Friend mentions the schools budget. I do not know whether she is aware that in Coventry one or two academies are already in serious trouble because of falling numbers as a result of certain changes in the education budgets.
Catherine McKinnell
I appreciate my hon. Friend’s point. It is not just local academies that are in trouble—there are some much bigger and more serious questions that we need to raise. First, why are the Government doing this? There is no proof whatsoever that academies per se raise educational standards. It is a distraction that schools now need to focus on this rather than on their educational attainment. Secondly, how will the Government enable the local political leadership to drive up standards and work together, as happened so effectively with the London Challenge, if the power and decision making is so centralised in Whitehall?
Is the Department for Education even fit for purpose to deal with over 20,000 schools across the country—about 3,400 secondaries and almost 17,000 primaries? There are signs that it is already struggling with its current workload of 4,000 schools. As the Education Committee, of which I am a member, recently uncovered, the Department could not even deliver its annual accounts to Parliament in time and required a statutory extension, and there remains doubt as to when it will ever be able to present them. This mass rush to conversion will only add to the current mess. We need only look at the fiasco of the free schools application process, where there is no clear rhyme or reason to the Department’s decisions to authorise new schools.
We see a Department in disarray. Of particular concern for my constituents is how the forced academisation process will fit alongside the large-scale programme of house building that is planned for our area. As a result of the coalition’s national planning policy framework, some 21,000 new homes are expected to be built in Newcastle by 2030, a large proportion of which will be in my constituency. That will require new school capacity, but who will be the guiding mind that will match and create that new school capacity in an area that will be controlled by Whitehall? Newcastle City Council already finds itself in the impossible position of being unable to establish new community schools to cope with existing demand. How on earth will it be able to deliver the right school places across Newcastle upon Tyne North when every school is accountable to the Secretary of State?
Finally, in addition to the fact that apprenticeships were not mentioned in the Chancellor’s Budget even though we were promised that they would be, another glaring omission was the lack of any announcement about how the Government intend to protect our regional airports from the impact of devolving air passenger duty to Scotland. That is crucial to Newcastle airport, which supports 12,000 jobs in the region, and through which £300 million of goods are exported every year. All talk of a northern powerhouse will be completely undermined if the Chancellor fails to deal with the issue urgently.
Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell). This Budget, like my right hon. Friend the Chancellor’s previous Budgets, helps to create jobs. That is the right thing to do, which is why I continue to support the strategy of lowering business taxes to encourage growth. The corporation tax cut will benefit 1 million companies in Britain, and the business rates measure will help 600,000 small businesses. Cutting capital gains tax, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) has carefully laid out, will help to boost enterprise. Reforming stamp duty and abolishing national insurance contributions will help the smallest businesses of all.
The Government have my wholehearted support in putting the next generation first. Our philosophy in the Conservative party is that debt is the most unethical thing of all to leave to the next generation, and I am proud that we continue to pay down the country’s debts; to reduce spending that cannot possibly have the consent of those who are yet to come; and to steer towards a surplus, which will put the public finances in the strongest position for today’s youngest.
Making it feasible for young people to buy a home or to save in a pension is crucial to intergenerational fairness, which is why I think that the lifetime ISA in this Budget is a positive thing. It should be seen alongside all the other measures that are already helping people in every corner of this country to get their first home. Ultimately, building homes is the most important way to provide homes at a price that can be afforded, and I urge the Chancellor and Housing Ministers to continue to build.
Mr Anderson
With the average pay for somebody on a zero-hours contract at £189 a week, how does the hon. Lady expect them to save in an ISA or buy a house?
Chloe Smith
I make two points to the hon. Gentleman. First, the percentage of people on zero-hours contracts remains about 2.5% of all who are in work. Secondly, as he will know from the small print of the Budget, for every £4 that somebody saves, the Chancellor will put in £1. That means that at the rate that the hon. Gentleman cites, for example, it is possible to consider taking up a savings product.
It is vital that those who come out of education and skills training have every possible opportunity, which is why the Budget is right to keep up job creation and investment in infrastructure. It is also crucial that we try to represent the values of the next generation. Generation Y —my own generation—and those coming after us value enterprise. Many will set up their own businesses, and many will work in a totally different pattern over their lifetime, so the Budget is smart to turn attention to the growing army of the self-employed. Many of the smallest businesses of all will welcome a drop in their NIC burden.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend use this opportunity to congratulate the Government on the start-up loans scheme, which has done so much to help young people to go into business and fulfil their entrepreneurial objectives?
Chloe Smith
I certainly will, and I welcome my hon. Friend’s reminder of that. I am sure he will agree with me on my next point, which is that we should also prize the ethical approach to business of many of those entrepreneurs. We should welcome the measures in the Budget that begin to make sense of taxing multinationals in the 21st century. The Government have my full support in ensuring that our tax system demands and gets a fair contribution from companies large and small, domestic and global.
Let me turn to the welfare measures in the Budget. As is well documented, Generation Y has a sceptical approach to the welfare state, and support for the welfare state has steadily declined by generation. We should therefore remind ourselves of the basic principles of what welfare is for. It is a safety net for when we are unable to look after ourselves, perhaps because of sickness, old age or disability. It is a safety net that we will all need in one way or another, so we all have a responsibility to maintain it. Because we are going to live longer on average than previous generations, we need to make sure it is affordable for the future. We also, of course, expect the richest to pay most. In summary, we need a sensible method of working out who needs most support and how to get it to them.
I did not support the measures announced in the Budget seeking to reduce support for the disabled through PIP. The manifesto on which I and my hon. Friends stood at the last election made it clear that we would spend less on welfare, but that we would do so by protecting the most vulnerable. I have supported the Government’s welfare reforms since 2010, principally because they put work first. Universal credit puts work first, as does the most recent reform of the rate for those who are on employment and support allowance and can work. In the 21st century, we should not write off people from work and independence; the policy of spending more on helping people to work despite a disability or a health condition is right.
In some cases, our welfare reforms have been about injustice in other ways, such as in relation to the removal of the spare room subsidy. For example, the pay to stay policy in our current Housing and Planning Bill will relieve taxpayers of subsidising the housing of those who may well earn more than they do, such as, dare I say it, the leader of Norwich City Council. These reforms are about fairness for taxpayers who foot the bill for a benefit they themselves could not expect to enjoy.
I am in the Chamber today to speak up for many constituents who simply want us to use limited resources to provide properly for those who need support. I helped constituents to record their concerns during the consultation on aids and appliances, and I am very pleased that my right hon. Friend the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has stopped that measure. We should protect the disabled and make savings elsewhere.
Our manifesto clearly pledged us to back pensioners. At some point in the future, however, we will have to look again at universal benefits. As I have said, the welfare state is a safety net, which means that pensioners need a decent income. That is why I wholeheartedly support the triple lock. But it does not necessarily mean that the most well-off pensioners need benefits as well, as my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) have already argued. When others are more in need—and, indeed, when there must be a balance with other generations—is it right to maintain such policies?
A Mrs Brown recently wrote to the Norwich Evening News letters page:
“Excuse me, but as a baby boomer I was…brought up in post-war abject poverty. We got an apple or orange for Christmas...I worked for everything I have. We never had credit and only had anything we could pay for or we went without.”
She is of course right. I deeply respect her and all my constituents, from any generation, who have worked hard and done the right thing. I am making an argument for fairness in the future, for helping those who most need it and for balance between the generations.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow other speakers in this Budget debate.
There is not a single Member of the House who has not received scores of letters in the past couple of weeks from people deeply concerned by what the Budget proposed on personal independence payments. Let me give the House just one example from my constituency. A woman living in a rural area, about 15 miles from the nearest railway station, was about to lose her Motability vehicle, which she uses to get to work, and she has a pretty severe disability.
I think it is abhorrent and extraordinary that the changes—we welcome them, whether they be resiled from, U-turned or whatever—have come about because of the internal workings of the Tory party, not because of the requirements of people in the most need and those of disabled people across our country. There is no morality in the way that decision was made, and the Government should hang their head in shame for all that has happened in the past few days.
On infrastructure, others have noticed—indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) wrote an article about it—that according to latest figures from the National Infrastructure Pipeline, which monitors public and private sector projects of more than £50 million, only 114 of 565 major projects are under construction. In 2013 The Economist published an article entitled “Let’s try to catch up with Mali”, which noted that OECD figures showed how low Britain ranks for infrastructure investment, including for rail, roads, airports and energy.
The Government now claim, as the Chancellor said, to be opening the door for growth in north Wales, but it is difficult to open a door to anything if people cannot get there. All the rhetoric about a northern powerhouse matters precious little if we do not deal with things such as tackling accident blackspots and single-track highways on both sides of the A483 and A5, or if we do not make it quicker and safer to travel on both sides of the border. We must also start speeding away with HS2 to Crewe, which will transform the economies of north and mid-Wales, and we need more direct trains to London on the Wrexham to Shrewsbury line to take the pressure off the Chester line and give us better connectivity. We should sort out a proper north Wales train infrastructure to Manchester and Liverpool airports, and we should consider what should be happening with 4G. I was intrigued to see astronaut Tim Peake out in space wishing us all a happy St David’s day, because he would not have managed to do that if he had been on a mobile phone in Llandrillo.
The hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) spoke about an ethical dimension for corporate taxation, but one issue that the Government did not consider in the Budget—although they needed to—is the insidious closure of banks across our country. In Wales, 130 bank branches have closed or will close over five years. That is simply unacceptable, and those banks that close their branches are not paying anything back to wider society.
My final point is about measures on philanthropy or rather the lack of them in the Budget. Gordon Brown introduced millennium gift aid in a previous Budget, and if the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) were here now, he would say how either he or John Major introduced the initial gift aid proposals in 1990. There was no mention of anything to do with philanthropy in this Budget, however, and it is time to consider that issue in greater detail. That might involve the implementation of a gift aid package for text donations, or another look at corporate philanthropy—those are just some of the measures that I am trying to fit into a five-minute speech on a mixed Budget.
Finally, in my last few seconds, I welcome what the Chancellor said about EU membership. There are three MPs in Denbighshire. I might be the only one who welcomes the stay-in vote, but I do.
Rishi Sunak (Richmond (Yorks)) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to support this one nation, responsible and pro-enterprise Budget. Tucked among the beautiful Yorkshire dales in my constituency is a thriving community that is built on the jobs provided by our small and medium-sized businesses—businesses such as the Wensleydale Creamery, whose cheese has taken a slice of Yorkshire to kitchen tables around the globe, or Tennants Auctioneers, a fourth-generation family business that is now one of the UK’s largest private auction houses.
Before I arrived in this place, I spent my career investing around the world in companies such as those, and providing the capital to help them grow. I am delighted that this Budget recognises what my own experience has taught me: for growing SMEs, there are few more important ingredients for success than solid access to finance. Indeed, there are few more important ingredients for our nation’s success than growing SMEs. Small and medium-sized businesses account for more than half of private sector employment. They are responsible for three quarters of the jobs created since the recession. They are also delivering social justice—the unemployed are six times more likely to find work with a smaller company.
Those companies need the fuel of deep capital markets to power their growth, but despite improvements, it is still not always easy for SMEs to get the funding they need. The challenges they face fall into two distinct categories: debt and equity. For debt finance, companies can go either to banks or to the corporate bond market, but our bond markets are underdeveloped. Europe’s economy is the same size as that of the United States, yet its bond market is only a third as big, which means that our companies are too reliant on banks for their debt needs. Indeed, they are four times more reliant on banks than their American counterparts. At a time when banks are rightly deleveraging, the reality for British companies is that far too many loan applications go without success.
There are also problems for companies wishing to access equity finance. Although we are a European leader, the UK’s venture capital market still has room to grow. Adjusted for GDP, the US’s VC market is seven times the size of the UK’s. We also lag behind Sweden, South Africa, Ireland and Israel. That matters because equity is the kind of capital that SMEs need to grow beyond their early stages. Thanks in part to the policies of this Chancellor, our nation has become one of the world’s start-up capitals, but we must now focus our energy on growing those start-ups, for just 3% of British companies manage to expand beyond 10 employees, which is half the success rate of companies in the United States.
The Government have consistently shown that they understand those challenges, which is why they created the seed enterprise investment scheme, which has helped more than 3,000 companies to raise early-stage finance; why they launched the funding for lending programme to ease credit for SMEs; and why they fund the British Business Bank to power our growing companies.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend. Getting enough capital, and venture capital in particular, and allowing small businesses to grow, especially those that traditional banking systems do not necessarily support, is key to stimulating more growth in our economy. I very much welcome his comments.
Rishi Sunak
I am grateful to my colleague, the Chair of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for those comments. I will go on to some of those points in due course.
I am delighted that the Budget goes even further to encourage investment in our businesses and our job creators. I am confident that reducing capital gains tax rates together with a brand-new 10% rate for long-term investments in private businesses will unlock millions in much needed funding. From speaking with investors this past week, it is clear that those policies have cut through and generated a fresh wave of enthusiasm for investing in British companies. On debt, I welcome the Budget’s further help for businesses rejected by traditional banks, which will now more easily be able to access alternative providers of finance.
Whether it is cheesemakers in the Yorkshire dales or FinTech companies in Old Street, the Chancellor has always backed the aspirations of Britain’s growing companies. By continuing to close the tax loopholes that Labour left open, the Budget has another message: Britain is becoming not only the best place to do business, but the fairest place to do business. This is a Budget for the little guy, for a new generation of British ideas, and for a country where the rules do not bend for big balance sheets. It is a responsible, one nation, pro-enterprise Budget that will get our companies the vital funding they need to unleash their potential, and I commend it wholeheartedly to the House.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
I want to focus on apprenticeships and the levy, which is key to opportunities for young people in Bristol South. I support the 3 million target by 2020. It is an ambitious target but we should be ambitious for our young people.
In many ways, Bristol is a booming city, with the highest household income outside London and easily the highest productivity of any big conurbation outside the capital, but apprenticeships are important in Bristol South because, as UCAS tells us, it sends fewer of its young people into higher education than any other constituency. Other opportunities are a lifeline to Bristol South’s young people. Apprenticeships and training are the route to a better future for so many people living in our communities. Although Bristol South is not home to a huge number of large companies, very many small and medium-sized enterprises are based there, owned by and employing local residents. I may disagree with the hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak), but I am glad he mentioned SMEs. I am particularly interested in the role that they are going to play in the delivery plan for apprenticeships and how the levy is going to work for them.
Last week, three important interventions emerged and caused me concern. First, the co-chair of the Government’s delivery board confirmed that SMEs will not be in the levy system when it launches, and that only firms paying the levy will have access to the new funding system from April 2017. Secondly, at the FE Week annual apprenticeship conference, we heard from the former Business Secretary about concerns that the levy may in fact be a revenue-raising measure, rather than a genuine one. Thirdly, we saw comments from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, which was concerned that the number of young apprentices has flatlined since 2010 and that many of these apprenticeships do not offer people a foundation they can build on.
I would like the Government to guarantee that every penny of the £3 billion this levy is expected to raise will be invested back into improving training and apprenticeships; that SMEs will have their fair share; and that the special and unique opportunities and challenges that SMEs bring to the apprenticeship table will be fully taken into account. How will young people, business, colleges and other training providers in Bristol South be able to access these opportunities? What guarantee can the Government give that my constituency will receive its share?
The Government plan for apprenticeships seems very much at the drawing board stage, so I am inviting firms in my constituency to help. I have issued an open call to SMEs in Bristol South to set out their ambitions for the shape of apprenticeship schemes over the next decade. I am sure the Government agree that the reaction and responses of employers to the levy will make or break the target. Will the Government therefore please accelerate the publication of the action plan, showing how the target will be met, how the levy will work and other fine details of the grand plan, so that I and others can work in Bristol South, alongside employers, colleges and other training providers, to promote and encourage full engagement?
An additional key consideration is the number of Bristol South residents who are not yet ready to take up an apprenticeship, so the detail of the Government’s plans for pre-apprenticeship training is of interest. It is essential we ensure that Bristol residents are not blocked from accessing these valuable opportunities because of a lack of existing skills.
I also have concerns about the realism of the 3 million target by 2020. Do the Government agree that there is a genuine danger that an apparently arbitrary target will risk a dangerous trade-off between quantity and quality? I heard of a call to my constituency office this week about a young person in Bristol South who was on an apprenticeship and was being asked to work from 7 am to 7 pm, with very poor support. That highlights the importance, in driving towards the 3 million target, of not ignoring the quality of that experience and support offered to young people. I also fear that post-19 loans will deter people from accessing training for the skills that employers need, which would have a negative effect on my constituency, so I look forward to reassurances on that from the Minister.
Earlier today, the Chancellor said to a Conservative Member—I hope he extends this to others—that where constituency MPs raise the issue of vital services for their constituency, this Government are listening.
In concluding, let me say that for me this is not a party political issue; I make my points in the spirit of co-operation and what is best for the people of Bristol South, who have sent me here to represent their interests. This is key to their ambition and aspiration.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
Parents in Bedford and Kempston will have wanted a Budget that said, “Yes, we are going to make sure you get a good job. Yes, we are going to make sure you get a decent amount of pay, whatever job you do. Yes, we will make sure you can keep as much of your taxes as possible. And, yes, we will deliver a Budget that will make sure that your children have a better future than you do.” The Chancellor, in his robust performance today, has demonstrated that this Budget can deliver on all those items.
I was shocked to hear the response from the shadow Chancellor, as he seemed to spend 20 minutes of his speech trying to hold the Chancellor to account for something that the Chancellor is not doing. That shows part of the Labour party’s problem: there is no coherence in its approach to this Government. I would therefore like to provide a bit of coherence in my criticism of one aspect of this Budget—the sugar tax. I do so because it is not what it says it is, it will not raise the taxes ascribed to it and it will not achieve the health benefits that were its original vaunted purpose.
It is clear that this is not actually a sugar tax. There will be no tax on sugar in cakes, puddings or confectionary. That might be great for food manufacturers, restaurant owners and chefs, but it is not actually a tax on sugar. It is not even a tax on soft drinks, because sugars in milk-based drinks or fruit juices are not covered either. In fact, it appears to be a tax not on sugar, but on five companies: Coca-Cola, Britvic, AG Barr, Nichols Vimto and Lucozade Ribena Suntory. The Government ought to be careful about having very specific taxes targeted on very specific companies, because they will be open to challenge at the Commission or in the courts.
Seema Kennedy (South Ribble) (Con)
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor made it very clear in the Budget that one of the objectives of the so-called sugar tax was to get companies to change their behaviour by making low-sugar drinks rather than full-sugar drinks. I used to drink a lot of full-sugar Vimto, but I now drink no-added-sugar Vimto. Does my hon. Friend accept that that is also one of the aims of the tax?
Richard Fuller
It is bizarre for the Government to attack one of the sectors of British industry that has done the most to innovate and bring in new products, while ignoring other parts of the industry that have not made the same changes. As my hon. Friend rightly says, the core of the issue is the impact on obesity. Office for National Statistics figures show that obesity among adults doubled between 1993 and 2013. The proportion of obese children in 2013 was 9.5%, which was higher than in 2012, but lower than in 2006-07. The products being targeted originate from way before the current obesity issue. Irn-Bru, which is often described as the national drink of Scotland, was introduced in 1901. Robinsons Barley Water was introduced in 1935, and Coca-Cola in 1886.
The Government are ignoring the advice of Public Health England which, in its October 2015 report, said that it is not possible to compare the impact of price increases achieved by, for example, the introduction of a tax on sugar sweetened drinks, with other factors, such as the demonstrated effects of marketing on children or the impact of in-store promotions on purchasing habits. Nevertheless, the general tone of the available evidence is that restrictions on marketing and promotions may be more effective than fiscal measures.
Neil Parish
Does my hon. Friend not think that it would be better for the Government to work with the companies to reduce the amount of sugar in their drinks, rather than bringing in any form of tax? In the end, all we will do is to make it more expensive for poorer people to buy these drinks. That will not necessarily stop them drinking them, whereas if the amount of sugar in them could be reduced, that might have a greater effect on their diet.
Richard Fuller
My hon. Friend, the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, speaks with enormous sense and knowledge. He is, of course, absolutely right. It is much better to engage the industry than arbitrarily to impose a levy, especially one with such great uncertainty. The OBR states:
“The tax will operate with a specific revenue target of £500 million for the second year of implementation”.
It goes on—here is some real Budget gobbledegook—to say:
“From a pre-behavioural yield of over £900 million, the behavioural responses lower the yield to around £500 million a year. As a new tax likely to prompt a large behavioural response, these estimates are clearly subject to significant uncertainty.”
Well, there we have it—not a clue at all.
Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)
Surely the two-year lead-in for the sugar levy is the right approach because that tells the manufacturers to reformulate. Surely the future and health of our children are more important than anything else.
Richard Fuller
The health of our children is, of course, extremely important, but, as I said, the sector is already innovating. There have been remarkable reductions in the sugar content of soft drinks compared with what has happened in other sectors, in which there has been no change in the amount of sugar that people consume. There are question marks over whether the levy will have the impact on health it is supposed to achieve. In Mexico, for example, where a sugar tax was recently introduced, the calorie reduction amounted to six calories a day. This regressive measure goes much against the principles that the Chancellor himself rightly outlined as the overarching ethos of the Budget.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this tax, which has many ambiguities, simply indulges our celebrity chefs and gives them more credence than they deserve?
Richard Fuller
I could not be more delighted to have given way to the hon. Lady, because she is quite right. The sugar tax is a passion of TV chef Mr Jamie Oliver, who is just the latest in a line of celebrities—think of people such as Mr Russell Brand and Mr Benedict Cumberbatch—to use their position to influence public policy. To quote The Independent, the
“chief beneficiaries of star-studded attempts to raise the profile of a good cause are the celebrity themselves”.
Can we have a new levy on policy pronouncements by well-heeled celebrities who sprinkle their fame to dazzle Ministers into ill-thought-through changes? The levy could pay for the unintended consequences for the public of their brief, highly jaundiced opinions. Emma Thompson’s pronouncements alone should secure the defence budget.
Philip Boswell (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Budget and the figures reported by the Office for Budget Responsibility—considered by many to be a contradiction in terms—demonstrate yet again the Chancellor’s inability adequately to manage the economy. He has failed on several key economic indicators and missed the targets the Tories have set for themselves. Notably, debt, deficit and borrowing levels are even worse than he promised last autumn.
Given time constraints, I shall summarily mention a few of the problems with the Budget, before focusing on a concern that has not been adequately covered by others. Page 136 of the OBR forecast shows that inflation is set to rise significantly from its current close-to-zero rate.
John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)
Does my hon. Friend agree that a sharp rise in inflation can have a negative impact on working households?
Philip Boswell
Yes, I completely agree. With the sterling depreciation, thanks in part to the uncertainty created by the UK Government’s EU referendum, consumer inflation has started to rise. The OBR has predicted that CPI will rise from 0.7% this year to 1.6% next year. Likewise, RPI is set to rise from 1.7% this year to 3.2% in 2017. Such a spike in inflation can have a negative impact across the economy, as my hon. Friend mentioned, because it means that many households around the country that are already struggling, including in my constituency, will find that the price of necessities rises at a time when they can least afford it.
Exports, which are already weak, will likely see further decline. Total export sales fell from £521 billion in 2013 to £513 billion in 2014, yet the Chancellor has declared an export target of £1 trillion by 2020. It is no surprise, then, that he is already likely to fall short of the target by over £300 billion, as was touched on by the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), who is no longer in the Chamber.
On business investment, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan) and the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), there is more bad news with regard to productivity, and research and development. Page 12 of the OBR’s “Economic and fiscal outlook” states that business investment will grow by only 2.6% this year, which is substantially less than the 7.4% predicted just three months ago in the autumn statement. Furthermore, the level of investment in 2019 is predicted to be a staggering 10% lower than predicted in December. So far, not so good.
I move now to an area of concern to me. Page 27 of the Red Book states that the Government expect to raise £25 billion from the sale of the Royal Bank of Scotland. Given several factors, however, including the current price of oil, I fear that this price might be exaggerated. In focusing on this issue, which I have grave concerns about, I would point out that between 2011 and 2014, RBS arranged £14.3 billion in leveraged loans to the oil and gas industry. In fact, RBS has been a leader among UK banks in arranging these high-risk loans. The falling price of oil has resulted in an increase in the default rates of these loans, however, and many of them have been repackaged into derivatives for sale to investors in the form of collateralised loan obligations—a derivative product starkly similar to the collateralised debt obligations that contributed to the 2007-08 financial crisis. How many of these risky loans RBS still has on its books remains uncertain, hence my concern for that particular £25 billion.
Let me take a minute to highlight what I view as a failure on the part of the Government to address the systemic risk inherent in the financial system and the wider economy in relation to the price of oil and leveraged investment. Alongside RBS, a number of US lenders with a large and active presence in UK markets have a high exposure on energy, due to leveraged lending in the oil and gas sector. For example, JP Morgan currently has $13.8 billion in outstanding debt relating to loans out of the roughly $100 billion in leveraged loans it issued to the oil and gas sector between 2011 and 2014. Wells Fargo arranged $98 billion in leveraged loans to the sector in that same time period, many of which are non-investment grade, and $17.4 billion of which is already outstanding. Alarm bells should be ringing somewhere.
On 15 December 2014, when the price of Brent was at $60 a barrel, the Financial Times predicted that if the price of oil were to continue to fall,
“there is a stark parallel with the US property market collapse that heralded the start of the 2008 global financial crisis—and upended banks along the way.”
Yet the systemic risk inherent to the financial system due to these high-yield loans and the “slice and dice” nature of derivative products relating to these loans that have been sold to investors were not even mentioned in the most recent Bank of England stress test result.
Finally, in the years since the 2007-08 financial maelstrom and ensuing recession, the Tory Government have demonstrated their expectation that the most vulnerable in society should pay the price for the mistakes of the financial institutions. In 2011, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that over 50% of Conservative funding came from the City. We know whose interests the Conservatives have at heart. The Budget clearly highlights the fact that this attitude has not changed, as evidenced in the £3.5 billion of new cuts that it introduces. This Budget is not good enough, and if the Chancellor really wants to be head boy, he should heed his report card, which should read “Must do better”.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
Let me first condemn the outrage in Brussels today and those who perpetrated it. My sympathies and prayers go out to all the victims and their loved ones.
While some highly respected colleagues are sitting on the Treasury Bench, may I put in a plug for the armed police in Dorset and around the country, and not least in our capital, to receive more money for training? As a former soldier, I know full well the complications of storming buildings and dealing with civilians who are fleeing from bombs, as they were doing in the departure lounge this morning, as well as about the chaos, the blood, the gore, the mess and the noise. To go into a building that has been attacked, armed police need an incredibly high degree of training, otherwise even more problems could be caused.
Richard Fuller
Does my hon. Friend recall the Prime Minister saying after the events in Bataclan that he would support continued funding for the police and particularly for our armed police?
Richard Drax
I do, and I welcome the Prime Minister’s comments. I am simply expanding on the need for highly specialist training. All kinds of things—images that can change during an attack and different lights—are needed in what will be a highly strategic attack. Our armed police would not be able to stay outside and wait for the Special Air Service to come; they would have to get into the building and save lives, as I am sure they would. I do not doubt for one second their courage or dedication. I am requesting that the Treasury and the Prime Minister look carefully at the moneys available to train our armed police to deal with assaults such as what we saw this morning which, sadly and tragically, are becoming more common.
Speaking of the military, may I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Chancellor on resorting to military tactics? It is always said that attack is the best form of defence, and my right hon. Friend’s robust performance in the House today was a very good example of that.
I welcome much of what is in the Budget. I welcome the raising of the tax-free personal allowance, the increase of the higher-rate threshold to £45,000, the freezing of fuel, beer and cider duties, and the expanding of the savings culture. The Chancellor also reduced corporation tax and cut taxes for small businesses, and I want to direct my remarks about those measures to Opposition Members. We heard the shadow Chancellor say that they constituted a tax cut for the rich. May I remind the Opposition that such businesses are the engine room of our country? Many people risk their homes to invest in businesses and struggle for years to make a profit. They then pay for all the people whom we are trying to get into work, while also taking vast risks in making all the goods that we need for the economy to run, and generating the money that we need to spend on, for instance, schools and hospitals.
The more money those business people keep, the more they can reinvest in their companies. It is not a matter of people jetting off in their 747s. I have visited many businesses, and I am sure that Opposition Members have done the same in their constituencies. I know that small engineering companies are now having to buy equipment that is worth £600,000, £700,000 or £800,000, and that profits are minimal. We need to help such companies for the sake of the future of our country, and the future of those whom we want to get back into work.
I agree entirely with my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) about the sugar tax. I, too, have doubts about it, and I hope that Ministers will think again. I am also concerned about the effects of raising the business rates threshold for small businesses and exempting some businesses altogether. I am sure that someone will correct me if I am wrong, but I understand that more and more local authorities, particularly rural authorities like mine, will rely increasingly on business rates, because central Government funding will be reduced to zero. If that is the case, and if businesses are to be exempted from business rates—which I absolutely applaud; do not get me wrong—where will the money come from for small rural councils such as mine? I should be grateful if the Minister could answer that question when he sums up the debate.
Let me now say something about the personal independence payment, and all that has happened in that connection. Like others, I have huge praise for my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith). Having been the leader of our party, a lesser man would have gone off into a cave and stayed there, but not this man; he went out and did all that he could do, and has done, for the poorest in our society. He has dedicated so much of his life to that, and I commend him for it.
I want to draw attention to an aspect of the PIP that greatly concerns me. Many constituents come to my surgeries and say that they have been assessed unfairly or lazily—whatever it may be. It is a tick-box culture, and I have never liked the ticking of boxes. In some instances, support has been withdrawn from my constituents while their cases are assessed, although many of them have had doctors’ certificates explaining why they need the money. May I strongly urge the Government to look closely at the assessing system? We need occupational therapists, family members and doctors to contribute to assessments. It is true that that would probably be more expensive, but at least we would get the assessments right, rather than causing huge distress to those who are least able to deal with it by taking away what support they have, and then giving it back to them X months later when a Member of Parliament has become involved.
Finally, let me point out that virtually every departmental budget is now ring-fenced. Which areas can we stop ring-fencing? There must be savings to be made, not least in overseas aid, which I am sure could be spent and targeted in a far better way.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
Let me begin by associating myself with the comments made by the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) about the dreadful situation in Brussels.
This debate has seemed to be more about astronomy than about the Budget, because we have all been talking about black holes. However, there is a clear analogy to be drawn. It will be remembered that Stephen Hawking famously described what he called the “black hole paradox”: the idea that information could simply disappear into a black hole, never to be restored, although all matter contained information that was to be held in perpetuity. What a perfect analogy that is, given that, at this point, we simply have no information about how the Budget will stack up. Our colleagues in local government would rightly be horrified.
Where can we find information about the impact of the Budget? We can find it in our constituencies, and obtain it from the people whom we represent. In the time that I have been granted, I shall offer three areas of information on which we can judge the Chancellor’s work. The first is personal debt; the second is savings; and the third is productivity. Those are three areas in which this Budget signally fails the British people.
It is no accident that personal household debt in this country is going up and up. “Unprecedented” is the term that the Office for Budget Responsibility has used to describe the impact of the Chancellor’s plans on our constituents. Unsecured personal debt is set to reach 3% of GDP and to stay at that level. This is a black hole into which the Chancellor is asking the public to pour their own money to pay for his mistakes. Just how bad is the situation? The Bank of England tells us that people are now borrowing £1 billion a month in this country. In January alone, people put £500 million on their credit cards, and Aviva tells us that the average family debt is now £13,000, up £4,000 from last summer’s level.
Those on the Conservative Benches who are casual about credit miss the point. Not everyone is paying the same level of interest. Some are being charged excessive amounts for the debts that they are getting into to pay for the Chancellor’s mistakes. The hon. Member for South Dorset talked about people putting their houses up to fund their businesses, but many in our communities have long given up on the dream of home ownership as a result of the debt that they are now in. Wages have risen by just 4% in the last few years, but house prices have gone up by 76%. We know that every single penny matters. That is why it is such a problem that people face these levels of debt. This Chancellor is banking on the British habit of borrowing, but that is like putting Wayne Rooney in charge of a stock-take in a Nike shop.
This is not just about people’s borrowing habits. The fact is that we are now a nation that cannot save either. We are saving just 4% of our disposable income, which is half as much as we were saving four years ago. That is the lowest level of personal saving since 1963. Help to Save will do little for the 26 million people in our country who do not even have access to £1,000 for an emergency. On this Government’s watch, they have no rainy day money. Lifetime ISAs are out of reach for those people who have too much month at the end of their money.
We are seeing a situation of rising personal debt, and low or no savings, in which wages are now stalling. This has an impact on our public finances, because it leads to lower tax receipts. They are down £44 billion on the projections made in 2011. That is why we on this side of the House are angry when we see that those who will do well out of the Budget are those who can well afford to pay. We know that 80% of the gains from the Budget will go to those in the top half of the income distribution, and that half of that amount will go to the top 20%. Meanwhile, debt is locking our people out of opportunities.
George Kerevan
Is the hon. Lady aware that the very act of running a budget surplus—that is, putting more in than we take out—forces the public accounts into a situation in which private borrowing increases?
Stella Creasy
The hon. Gentleman might not know of my long-held concerns about the way in which this Government are managing the public finances. We do not have time today to talk about PFI debt, or about PF2, which is going to lead to even more problems.
We on this side of the House get the fact that we need to get the deficit down, because every single penny that we pay in interest, and every single penny that we use to pay for the mistakes in this Government’s borrowing, is money that could be invested in our people. It could be invested in the public services that our communities need in order to succeed. That is the point about this Budget. It is not just about the damage that it is doing to people today, or about the debts and destitution that they face now. It is about the narrowing of their horizons tomorrow, too.
We can see the Government signally failing to deal with the productivity gap Britain faces, and the 18% difference between ourselves and our competitors. They are failing to invest in our young people. By the end of this Parliament, China intends to produce 195 million graduates. Not just China is investing in its people; Brazil, Russia and Argentina are as well. Our children will have to compete with graduates from those countries, but our Government are offering them nothing in that regard. We can see the consequences for them in the productivity gap. And when the Government are forcing every school to become an academy, we can see that they are rejecting their own responsibility.
How very different this is from when we sat here a year ago and listened to the Chancellor claim that he was fixing the roof and that Britain would be able to walk tall again. He is a bit like one of those builders we see on the “Watchdog” programme. I would encourage the British people to go to their trading standards officer about him, but the Government have cut that service too. They are left with only one alternative, to look to an alternative party of government—the Labour party—to offer a genuine investment in the future of our young people and a genuine recognition of why fiscal responsibility matters. This is a black hole that is sucking everything out of this country—including, hopefully, the Chancellor’s career.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
It is a pleasure and an honour to follow the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy). As a graduate in physics and maths from the University of Liverpool, I both congratulate and condemn her on managing to get both Stephen Hawking and Wayne Rooney into the same speech.
I want to send my condolences to the families of the victims in Brussels. I was in Brussels shortly after the Paris attacks and the degree of security being implemented demonstrated that the authorities were already on high alert. It is clearly a devastating tragedy.
The events of the past few days seem to have over-shadowed a remarkably good Budget from the Chancellor. Reducing business taxes to promote growth to enable people to have the dignity of earning a living, rather than a life on benefits, should be applauded on both sides of the Chamber, not condemned. I trust that that will be the Government’s focus over the next four years.
London has done particularly well out of the Budget, but I have not heard many details mentioned in the Chamber. The Chancellor has invested £80 million in Crossrail 2, which will be this country’s single biggest transport operation outside HS2 and something that we clearly need to get on with. I am looking forward to Crossrail 2 enhancing north-west London and my constituency in particular. It will be excellent for everyone involved in transport across London. Transferring business rates powers to the Mayor of London and London councils is remarkably important and will mean that the transport projects that London desperately needs will be funded by the business rates paid by London’s businesses, with that money being appropriately retained. Kick-starting the redevelopment of Old Oak Common will be central to the generation of new homes, new jobs and new businesses and a much better transport infrastructure for London.
Combating rough sleeping across the country is important. Ensuring that people do not experience a second night out is vital, particularly in London. I ask the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands), to make it clear when he replies to the debate how much of the money will go to London, because London has the biggest homelessness problem and we all want to see it combated. I recently visited FirmFoundation in my constituency, which does a brilliant job of dealing with single homeless men, but it needs additional resources to assist such men and to enable them to get back into a proper home and get their lives back together again. It desperately wants to know how it can apply for the extra money being made available, so I trust that we will hear more details later.
In contrast to my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller), I applaud the Chancellor for introducing the sugar tax. Given that behaviours can be driven by taxation, something of which I strongly approve, the Chancellor has missed an opportunity. I welcome the increase in tobacco duty, particularly on rolling tobacco, to encourage people to give up smoking. However, given that the Chancellor has said that the sugar tax will be spent on things to encourage a reduction in obesity, let us drive behaviour by adding additional duties. Just a penny increase on every cigarette smoked in this country would raise £500 million, which could be invested in initiatives such as encouraging people to give up smoking or, even better, not to start in the first place.
The other issue that I want to mention is something that is not going to go away: seeking justice for Equitable Life policyholders. I had hoped that we would hear something in the Budget about further compensation for both the pre-1992 trapped annuitants and the people who have not received compensation thus far. Let me put the Chancellor on notice that we will continue our campaign until we get justice for those who suffered as a result of that terrible scandal.
Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow my namesake, the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). I did not agree with everything he said, but I associate myself with his comments about the dreadful events in Brussels today.
I am not sure that I buy everything that the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) said at the weekend, but he was right when he said on “The Andrew Marr Show” that the Budget was unfair and widely perceived to be so. When the Budget was announced last week, it contained cuts to support for disabled people while giving tax breaks to the wealthy and to large corporations. Although I agree with the right hon. Gentleman on the unfairness point, it is a pity that his conscience did not jump into life some years ago so that we could have avoided the suffering that his cuts—or the cuts that he supported—to tax credits, employment and support allowance and other benefits have caused to so many vulnerable people.
The decision to abandon the cuts to PIP are welcome, but we must not forget the distress that was caused to many, many people who have visited our surgeries in recent weeks. Those people were really concerned about how they would manage should the cuts go ahead. I have not finished worrying yet, because we do not know from where the £4.4 billion of cuts will come, never mind the £3.5 billion-worth of efficiency savings that are also mentioned in the Red Book. It is really irresponsible to ask Government Members to go through the Lobby tonight in support of the Budget when they know so little about the detail and where the cuts are going to be made.
The Chancellor said many, many times that this was a Budget for young people and for the future, but it most certainly was not. Where was the step change in new investment for our universities and colleges, allowing Britain to build the knowledge-based economy that the Prime Minister is so keen to talk about and that would provide high value jobs for young people and others? As the organisation Million+ said, universities will have to foot the bill for increased employer contributions to pension schemes without any additional funding, and it is very disappointing that the overall reduction in capital expenditure for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills remains in place until 2020.
Similarly, the National Union of Students has been reminding everyone that the removal of education maintenance allowance, the scrapping of maintenance grants and the repayment hike for student loans have been devastating for many young people. The union, like others, is pleased about doctoral loans and some limited new money for lifelong learning—the individual savings account—and the apprenticeship levy, but, as it says, those measures are too little too late. It says:
“While George Osborne’s promises might sound appealing, his words do not make up for his actions. The government has forced cut after cut onto students who are already struggling to get by. If the chancellor truly wants to help young people, he could start by reversing his own damaging decisions.”
We all know that science funding is extremely important to our economy, so I hope that the Minister will ensure that the materials catapult centre proposed by Durham university gets the go-ahead.
The Budget was also unfair to regions. Once again, the north-east got very little out of it. There was some mention of a future upgrade to the A66 and A69, but nothing significant to reverse the continued underinvestment in the region from this and the previous coalition Government. The chamber of commerce said of the autumn statement—it has spoken for many—that it was disappointed by the lack of substance around the northern powerhouse, particularly what it means for the north-east, and it has said the same of this Budget. We all know that north-east councils, along with other authorities in more deprived areas of the country, have had their budgets hit hardest, so how will this northern powerhouse be delivered? As my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) said earlier, there was nothing about air passenger duty and how Newcastle airport will be supported to expand. The north-east could benefit from a huge increase in resources to renew our infrastructure, build our green energy sector, grow our automotive businesses and extend our processing sector, but there is nothing to support that, just ridicule for our schools.
Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)
I am delighted to contribute to today’s Budget debate and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Chancellor on continuing to deliver a long-term economic plan that has seen unemployment in my constituency fall by a record 63% since 2010.
I have always been a passionate believer that for those who can work, work is the only real way to get on in life and succeed. This is not just a personal view but one that is shared by people up and down the country, and I am proud to belong to a Government who support a strong work ethic and are helping more families to keep more of what they have worked hard for. As a result of the measures announced in the Budget, in Erewash alone more than 45,000 people received an income tax cut and around 2,000 people were taken out of tax altogether.
Turning to business support, I warmly welcome the huge boost to the midlands engine, which includes £16 million of investment in our world-class aerospace industry, including support for Rolls-Royce, which has just announced that it is to create 350 new jobs locally as it prepares to ramp up the production of the new Trent XWB engine. Locally, SMEs and those who are self-employed stand to gain significantly from changes to small business rate relief and the abolition of class 2 national insurance contributions. These measures not only provide a welcome boost to the Erewash economy, where many of our businesses are small furniture manufacturers or engineering firms, but recognise the fact that those businesses are the real backbone of the British economy.
As chair of the all-party group on adult and childhood obesity and as a member of the Select Committee on Health, I want briefly to address the new sugar levy. The atrocities in Brussels today are a sharp reminder that the first duty of any Government is the protection of their citizens, but we rarely consider that phrase from anything other than a national security point of view. There is no doubt that obesity and the problems that arise from being obese, such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease, are becoming a serious issue within our society. Responsibility for tackling that lies on many heads—manufacturers, retailers, Governments, educators, health professionals—and, of course, on people taking individual and personal responsibility for the matter. By introducing the sugar levy, the Government are accepting their duty to protect the health of our citizens and of generations to come. In that, I must disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller), who is no longer in his place.
I urge drinks manufacturers to step up to the mark and play their part in tackling the obesity crisis by reformulating drinks and recipes over the next two years to reduce added sugars. We cannot tackle the obesity crisis by a sugar levy alone, and I look forward to the Department of Health announcing further measures in the forthcoming weeks and months.
In my view, this is a fiscally responsible Budget for the long term, supporting workers, businesses and our future generations. More importantly, it is a one nation Budget that truly puts the health and wellbeing of our nation first and I commend it to the House.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to contribute to such an important debate and to follow so many speeches from my hon. and right hon. Friends. Although I might not have agreed with what the hon. Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) said, I commend her focus on jobs and the importance of delivering a high-wage, job-based economy for our country. By contrast, the Chancellor opened with the mix of bluff and bravado, arrogance and malice that has become his trademark, but even so, I was absolutely astonished to hear him refer to social justice. This is a Budget with unfairness at its heart and misery in its veins. The Chancellor’s record of failure—failure to achieve any of his own debt targets, failure to deliver decent wages—
Suella Fernandes (Fareham) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady agree with me and the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which reported yesterday that since the Chancellor has been in place, the gap between rich and poor has narrowed because most people have got into jobs? That is the way to bring about social justice.
Chi Onwurah
I would thank the hon. Lady for that contribution, but it flies in the face of the lived experience of my constituents, who are in low-wage jobs, cannot make ends meet and find themselves attacked by this Chancellor’s Budget. The Chancellor has failed to deliver for working people. His failure to raise productivity has been trumped in the past few days, in media terms at least, by his failure to deliver a Budget that lasts 48 hours.
The 1,443 PIP claimants in Newcastle will, like me, be pleased at least that that cut proved an ideological attack too far, but it is undoubtedly the case that by demonising and attacking all benefits claimants, the Chancellor hoped to create an atmosphere in which it was acceptable to enrich the better-off on the backs of the poorest and most vulnerable among us. It will be some compensation for them that members of the Government are now attacking and reviling each other almost to the same extent they have attacked and undermined benefits claimants.
I do not want to focus on the 48 hours following the Budget as experienced by the Chancellor. Instead, I want to give three examples of events that I attended in those 48 hours that highlighted the huge gap at the centre of the Budget, which was a failure to address our future economy and the future of the next generation, as he put it. On Thursday I visited the Big Bang fair organised by EngineeringUK with engineering professional bodies and businesses from across the country, where 70,000 young people discovered or rediscovered the excitement offered by a career in science, technology, engineering and maths. Those are the jobs of the future, the ones I want for my constituents, high-paid—not minimum wage, minimum skill—jobs.
But where were such jobs mentioned in the Budget? Where was the investment in the future to help create those jobs? There were, it is true, tax breaks for those hiring out their assets in the digital economy, but there was nothing for manufacturing or technology. There was no investment in digital infrastructure. There was no more detail on apprenticeships, which we need to ensure that we have the skills of the future. This was a Budget that left behind the technology that we need for our future.
That evening I visited the Creative Newcastle Get Digital summit, celebrating one of the fastest-growing sectors in the north-east, only hundreds of yards from where Stephenson’s Rocket was built. That was the real northern powerhouse, powering our economy into the future. But the Budget offered a few hundred million pounds for investment in north-east transport, against the tens of billions of investment in transport in London. This Budget did not offer any investment in digital infrastructure, and we stand to lose the millions of investment from the European Union, thanks to the referendum and the chaos on the Government Benches over that.
Finally, on Friday morning I visited St Paul’s primary school, where 10 and 11-year-olds were taking on the Pioneer challenge with employers and other schools across the region to promote STEM and entrepreneurship. Those children are the future basis for our economy in the north-east. They are proud Geordies, yet what the Budget did for them was to force the academisation of their school, taking it out of the local authority and the community that it seeks to support and atomising it—in effect, privatising it and taking away responsibility from the local parents and putting it on a desk in Whitehall, which is also where the northern powerhouse is found.
This Budget offered nothing for the future of our young people, for the north-east economy or for our country.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
I would like to start with fiscal responsibility, as the Chief Secretary is on the Front Bench. Fiscal responsibility is very important —for the sake of our children, if nothing else. I have two-year-old twins, and there is nothing noble, moral or ethical about consistently spending more than we can afford and sending the bill to the next generation. Moreover, as the Chancellor eloquently put it earlier, without fiscal responsibility we cannot deliver the services that are so important.
Clearly, a good start has been made on fixing the deficit left behind in 2010; about half of it has been eliminated. Labour Members are right to point out that there is still more work to do, but it does not seem entirely appropriate for them to give angry lectures on the topic, when they have opposed every measure proposed by the Government over the last five years to reduce the deficit. In fact, had we followed their advice during the last Parliament, our national debt would be £900 billion higher than it is today.
During his thoughtful speech, my colleague on the Treasury Committee, the hon. Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan), suggested that high spending during the late 1940s and 1950s demonstrated that we could in fact spend money to grow. I am afraid that I dispute that analysis, because that spending spree ended in 1976, when we had to go cap-in-hand to the IMF. Even Denis Healey, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, said:
“You can’t spend your way out of a recession”—
a lesson we would do well to remember.
George Kerevan
My point was to go not into the 1970s, but into the very specific period of the 1950s, when national debt as a share of GDP was significantly higher—twice as high—in many years than it is now. That did not lead to a burden on the generation that was young then—my generation—which is in fact extremely well-off as a result of that spending. I was trying to look at whether borrowing per se disbenefits future generations, and it does not—it depends on how we spend the money.
Chris Philp
I must respectfully disagree with the conclusions of my Treasury Committee colleague. If we look at economic performance in the 1960s and 1970s, we see that the enormous debt overhang, with the state spending too much money, was a drag on the economy and culminated in the 1976 bail-out. That was the natural conclusion of the overspending that started in the 1950s and continued through the post-war consensus period, which ended only in 1979.
The second main criticism levelled at the Budget by Opposition Members is on the issue of fairness. I am afraid I disagree with the comments made over the weekend by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith). This is a fair Budget, but let me produce some evidence to substantiate that.
Over the last five years, spending on disability benefits has increased by £3 billion, and it is forecast to increase further. That strikes me as fundamentally fair. We are spending more than we ever have on the NHS and on education—particularly on pupils from low-income backgrounds, via the pupil premium. Moreover, we are introducing the highest-ever national minimum wage—the national living wage—which takes effect in about a week’s time. We have taken millions of people out of income tax entirely, which disproportionately benefits people on low incomes. We have frozen petrol duty once again, which also disproportionately benefits people on low incomes, because things such as petrol duty are inherently regressive.
If we consult the Treasury’s distributional analysis, we see that the lowest 20% of earners pay just 6% of tax; we would expect that to be 20% if everything was even. They will pay the same in 2019-20 as they paid in 2010, while the top quintile will pay 52%—up from 49% five years ago. The highest earners will therefore pay proportionately more in five years’ time than they did five years ago. This analysis excludes the effect of the national minimum wage; if that is included, the skew will go even further. I believe that this Budget is a fair Budget. It protects spending on the most vulnerable, and those with the broadest shoulders are bearing the burden.
Let me turn briefly to business. Before coming here, I spent 15 years setting up and running entrepreneurial businesses. There is a reason why our economy has created 2.4 million jobs in the past five years, and why youth unemployment in my constituency is down by an incredible 62%—it is not an accident. It is because corporation tax has been cut, which has encouraged businesses to invest in creating jobs. I am delighted that the Chancellor is continuing this very successful long-term economic plan—[Interruption.] I see it commands widespread support—with further cuts in corporation tax and capital gains tax to encourage investment. My Treasury Committee colleague suggested that lower corporation tax encouraged share buy-backs, which is a bad thing. I would respectfully suggest that share buy-backs cycle money back into the investor community, who can then reinvest in other opportunities.
I welcome the Government’s action on international tax evasion through the BEPS initiative, although they could forerun that with further moves on transparency and disclosure unilaterally in the UK, as has been suggested. There is a consultation document on giving the Financial Policy Committee further powers to direct buy-to-let mortgage lending, which appears to be very high. I urge the Government to look seriously at those proposals and enact them at the earliest opportunity.
I support this Budget. It is good for business and good for our country—and most of all, it is fair.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I am interested in something that the hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) said when he mentioned Denis Healey. There was another individual who said, “You never had it so good” in 1959, but by 1963 the economy of this country was in very serious trouble. People should be very careful when they start sloganising like that.
To be charitable about this Budget, the most one can say about it is that it is divisive. Frankly, it puts the burden of the national debt and the national economy on the shoulders of the poorest. Over the past few days—I will not rehearse it now—we have had the fiasco with the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. If the Chancellor had an economic plan, why was he blown off course over the past 48 hours or so? He would not have been blown off course if he knew what his economic plan was. Did he not know the implications of the cuts he was inflicting on the poorest members of our society?
During the general election, the Conservatives bandied about a figure for cuts in benefits—I think it was £12 billion —but when they were pushed to spell out exactly where they would find that sum, they never answered the question. There has been a deception on the British public based on the argument that the country was in an economic mess that they inherited when in fact it was the world economic situation that had deteriorated. If Ministers really want to know about this, they should watch the second part of the BBC 2 programme about Obama. The first part was about how Obama dealt with the debt that he inherited—from a conservative Republican, George Bush, by the way. Interestingly, at that stage Obama spent $85 billion on bailing out the motorcar industries, so I have no doubt there was an economic problem.
The Government are preparing the ground for some of these measures by always hinting at the international economic situation, so if we listen to them very closely, we can expect more cuts. It is no economic strategy to continually inflict cuts on the poorer people in society, and on local government and the public services. On the one hand they say they value those in the public services, but on the other they only give them a 1% wage increase. If they really value the nurses and the doctors in this country, then they ought to give them a decent increase.
Equally, in fairness to the Government, I have to say that I certainly welcome the help given to small businesses. That is an important factor, because 3 million or 4 million jobs have been created in this country by small businesses, but sometimes they are picked up by the larger companies. People tend to forget that.
Not enough is being invested in skills, and we must be careful about that. It is one thing to have a target of 200,000 apprentices, but the question is: are they quality apprenticeships? More importantly, we had the recent example of student nurses, whose grants have been cut. A married woman who suddenly wants to study part time will no longer qualify for that grant.
Once again, the Government have placed the burden on local authorities. Over the next few years, Coventry City Council will have to find between £70 million and £90 million for something that has been slipped out in the Budget. Not a lot of people have picked up on this, and it certainly has not been mentioned today, but Government grant will be shifted on to local authorities. When local authorities have to put up council tax to counter that and to deliver public services, the Government may come along and call local authorities prolific spenders, or they may want to cap it three years down the road. These are things that we should be conscious of. In the west midlands, the police budget is 80% funded by Government grant. Can people not see the implications for those services and for local government in terms of jobs? As I have indicated, local government is paying a terrible price, along with the poor of this country.
I will finish by talking about academies. An academy is closing in Woodlands ward in Coventry, which is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson). I do not want to intrude on his territory, but I intend to start taking the matter up with Ministers, as a route for consultation, and with the local authority.
Seema Kennedy (South Ribble) (Con)
Since 2008, all developed economies have struggled with low confidence, lack of investment and sluggish growth. How each finance Ministry has responded to that challenge is quite clear from the growth and unemployment rates of our competitor economies.
The long-term economic plan is not just a slogan; it is a plan that we can be proud of. Since 2010 it has delivered for our constituents record levels of employment, stable interest rates and low inflation. Those are not just dry, dusty economic terms. They mean that in our constituencies, people have jobs; that we are not seeing mass house repossessions like we did in previous recessions; and that savings have kept their value. We have only to look at countries that are almost on our doorstep, such as Greece, to see that mass unemployment has massive social consequences when Governments lose control of their economies.
Our economy still faces great challenges. My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak) talked about access to finance and investment, and I want to touch on those measures briefly. Many colleagues have quite rightly pointed out that cutting taxes leaves businesses with spare cash to invest. That leads to more recruitment and more tax take; it is a virtuous circle. I very much welcome the cut in corporation tax, and I disagree with the hon. Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan) who said we do not need to cut it any further because it is already low enough.
I welcome the 10% rate on long-term investment in small cap companies. We need to do more to foster a culture of long-term investment, and the Budget goes some way to addressing that. Access to finance is still a barrier for some businesses. I was glad to see that the British Business Bank will carry on supporting SMEs through the Help to Grow programme from this spring, supporting at least £200 million of lending, and that the enterprise finance guarantee programme will be extended until 2018.
I have long been troubled not only by the brakes on investment but by the barriers to entry that prevent entrepreneurs from starting up in the first place. Business rates are one such barrier, because they are a fixed cost paid by businesses before they even start up. When I have spoken to small businesses in my constituency, they have welcomed the extension of small business rate relief. I also welcome the discussion paper on the revaluation of properties for business rates, because the three-year cycle will fit in a lot better with standard rent reviews.
I welcome most the changes in stamp duty land tax for commercial properties. Again, this tax is a barrier to businesses opening or expanding. In my previous life as a commercial property solicitor, I saw small businesses unable to open or grow because of the stamp duty land tax, or they adopted avoidance behaviours, which did not help anybody.
I want to speak briefly about investment infrastructure in the north, which I feel passionate about. We need more investment, particularly in east-west connections. I respectfully ask Treasury Ministers if there could be some money in the next Budget for the Ribble bridge.
The aim to have £1 trillion of exports by 2020 will boost our economy, and the investment in UK Trade & Investment is most welcome. Yesterday was the festival of Nowruz, when Iranians celebrate their new year. I very much welcome the fact that my right hon. Friends the Chancellor and the Business Secretary will visit Iran in May, and I wish them the best of luck.
The record shows that this Government’s long-term economic plan is working in the face of a difficult global economy. This Budget focuses on investment, and I shall be happy to support it tonight.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. There are still a great many Members who wish to speak, so I will have to reduce the limit to four minutes.
John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)
I give the Chancellor credit for one thing—he is consistent. After all this time, he is still failing: he has failed on key economic indicators; he has missed the targets that he has set; he has failed on his target debt and GDP; he has failed to hit his target on the current account and on public sector net borrowing. The one thing that the Chancellor has achieved is to prove beyond doubt that the Tories’ claim to economic credibility now lies in tatters. The Budget announcement clearly reveals that the Chancellor and the UK Government made the move to a decade of austerity through choice, certainly not through necessity. No matter what further U-turns are announced, his Budget means that society’s poor are in effect still paying for the mistakes of society’s rich. This pursuit of austerity—this Government’s callous actions favouring society’s rich—means, as the Chancellor confirmed this afternoon, that it is always the poor who, in his words, “pay the price.”
Philip Boswell
Since the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found in 2011 that over 50% of Conservative party funding under the current Prime Minister comes from the City of London, does my hon. Friend agree that we can see whose interests the Conservatives truly have at heart?
John Mc Nally
I thank my hon. Friend for that very valuable point. I hope Conservative Members will think deeply about what he has said.
I want to take this opportunity to welcome the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to his new position. I urge him to use his portfolio to protect, support, enable and empower the most vulnerable in society, and return to them some peace of mind. The Chancellor did not provide an answer earlier today when he was asked about the plans for welfare cuts. To my mind, he succeeded only in causing the disabled more stress than they are already experiencing.
Not only have the Government managed to fail on the economic and productivity targets they set themselves, but we can clearly see that the deficit, the debt and the level of borrowing are worse than was promised last autumn. By contrast, the Scottish National party has set out a sensible alternative to austerity, which would return the public finances to a sustainable path, while continuing to invest in public services.
It is worth noting that, after much debate, wrangling and negativity, the UK Government have, in my opinion, seen sense and agreed to introduce a graduated sugar tax on soft drinks in 2018. Let us hope that we see some corporate responsibility among manufacturers and that they will willingly announce reductions in the sugar content of their products.
Health is a subject about which I have been deeply concerned for some time. I spoke during the sugar tax debate in November, when I gave my support to Jamie Oliver, the celebrity who has been mentioned today, and the other MPs present that day who have fought hard to bring this issue into the public domain and bring about change. I met Jamie at a House of Commons debate on diabetes, and I agreed with his aim of offering the public clear and reliable information about the sugar that we all consume—indeed, the planned confusion on some labelling reminds me of the Budget that we are discussing. I am grateful for the Government’s U-turn from their position before the debate in November, when they stated that they had
“no plans to introduce a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages”.
Philip Boswell
Does my hon. Friend agree that the sugar tax is as much about taking the first step to reduce sugar consumption as about raising awareness?
John Mc Nally
Absolutely. It is the first step in raising awareness throughout the land, and as I said, perhaps more manufacturers should take cognisance of the fact that sugar is causing a lot of problems in this country.
I am delighted that the SNP was joined by the FairFuelUK campaign and The Sun in calling for a freeze on fuel duty. We have successfully pressured the Chancellor not to raise fuel duty—a victory for small businesses, rural communities, and family budgets across Scotland and the UK. I praise my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) and other MPs—particularly the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff)—for their help to remove VAT on women’s sanitary products. I would like the Chancellor to go further, and I refer him to the gender pricing debate that colleagues and I took part in on 2 February, so that we make the added cost of living for women in the UK a thing of the past.
I am pleased that the Chancellor has followed the example of the Scottish Government and realised that small and medium-sized businesses are a huge driver of economic growth. I welcome the Chancellor undertaking a review of business tax, which is designed to be a road map to a more competitive tax. He could do no better than match the Scottish Government’s commitment to supporting SMEs—a commitment which has meant that spending on economic development in Scotland is more than double the UK average. Over the last quarter, Scotland’s overall employment rate has increased by more than the UK equivalent. Finally, I seek the Chancellor’s reassurance that before Members make arrangements for a summer break, he will announce to the House the date of a corrective Budget.
Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)
The Budget builds on the Chancellor’s strong record over the past six years of restoring sanity to the public finances, rebuilding the nation’s economy and securing growth. It is a shame that the shadow Chancellor is no longer in the Chamber, but I am sure that the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury will pass on the message that despite the shadow Chancellor’s mean-spirited comments to the Chancellor, such a feeling is not reciprocated on the Government Benches. Indeed, I am sure that I speak for all Conservative Members when I say that I hope that the shadow Chancellor will remain in his position for many years to come.
The Budget contains many measures that will benefit people and businesses in Dudley South by creating opportunities that are the hallmark of any compassionate society. There are nearly 3,000 small and medium-sized employers in Dudley South, many of which will benefit from the permanent increase in small business rate relief thresholds, as well as the increase in thresholds at the higher rate of business rates. As the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) was generous enough to acknowledge, such measures are indisputably good for small businesses. About 2,000 self-employed people in Dudley South will benefit from the abolition of class 2 national insurance contributions as part of an ongoing simplification and modernisation of the taxation system.
For me, the most significant announcement in the Budget last Wednesday was of a new enterprise zone for the Waterfront in my constituency. I had been running a campaign about that since before the general election, so I put on record my personal thanks both to the Chancellor and to the Minister for Communities and Resilience, who has responsibility for devolution, who have taken the time to meet me, to listen to the arguments for the enterprise zone and, more importantly, to understand and act on them.
The enterprise zone will create more than 4,000 net new jobs—[Interruption.] As the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) said, it will create significant benefits not only for Dudley borough, but for the wider region, which I happily acknowledge. It will mean a 100% business rate holiday alongside 100% capital allowances on large investment in new plant machinery, which has been extended for eight years. It is a big boost to our local economy and promises to add millions of pounds to local prosperity. I thank Dudley Council and the Black Country local enterprise partnership for all the work they did in making that possible.
The Budget is a big step forward in creating opportunities for all nations and all regions of our country. The black country is well placed to take full advantage, and I will certainly support the Budget this evening.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
I want to focus my comments on homelessness and the effects on it caused by the Budget and the changes over the past six years, specifically because I attended an event this weekend organised by Rucksack, a charity that gives advice and clothing to homeless people in Grimsby and the surrounding area. It directs rough-sleepers to hostels with spare beds and other organisations that can offer help, such as the YMCA, Salvation Army and Harbour Place, which is a well-known local organisation. They all do fantastic work but, due to the recent surge in homelessness, some local hostels have extensive waiting lists of 15 people who cannot get beds. Rucksack tells me that each of those organisations is substantially overstretched in offering their provision to local people in dire straits. Homelessness is not caused by fluctuations in the economy; it is about people’s support structures.
In my area—I am sure the situation is replicated across the country—there is a critical shortage of appropriate properties for people suffering varying degrees of disability, and their partners, children or people they care for, because of the funding available for adaptations in social housing and private housing for people with disabilities. It is becoming more difficult not only because the funding is decreasing significantly, but because the thresholds that people face to qualify for it are so high.
It is a test for our society. I heard colleagues say eloquently yesterday that the debate is about whether we are compassionate enough to ensure that help is there for people in their most difficult time. We have failed that test in recent years. The Treasury briefed The Sun before the Budget that the Chancellor was drawing up plans to eradicate homelessness. How typical was that of the Chancellor! There was a great pre-Budget story for the papers, complete with a celebrity endorsement from Richard Gere to catch attention. On the day itself, that grand scheme turned out to be nothing more than a sticking plaster. I defy any Government Minister to stand up and say, with a straight face, that the scheme will get us anywhere near eradicating homelessness. As the chief executive of Crisis said, the measures do little to tackle the underlying problems.
I am no spreadsheet geek, by any stretch of the imagination, but I have had a look at tables 2.1 and 2.2 in the Red Book, which deal with measures in this Budget and those in previous Budgets and autumn statements that are due to come into effect this year. They relate to housing benefit changes, the temporary accommodation funding mechanism and reductions in social housing rents, which have impacts on the ability of housing associations to invest in existing properties or to build new ones. All those things have a significant impact on homelessness and the likely increases in it. The £115 million proposed is therefore a case of giving with one hand and taking significantly away with the other. I know that organisations such as Rucksack and other small charities in my constituency, such as Harbour Place, will say that they are not clear where that £115 million is going to go. It really needs to go to those who need it the most and the organisations that provide direct care and help. Under their welfare reforms, the Government made those under the age of 25 ineligible for housing benefit. That is another cut within this Budget, but I will end there.
Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)
A number of measures in this Budget will have a positive impact on smaller businesses, and it is absolutely right that we continue to stimulate growth in the size and number of small and medium-sized enterprises as they have undoubtedly been a key contributor to a strengthening economy, both locally and nationally.
The midlands is vital to our economy, and I am pleased that the Government—
Chris White
And Opposition Front Benchers are generous enough to recognise it as such.
Some 96,000 more businesses have been formed in the midlands since 2010, which amounts to about 52 a day. The announcement of the midlands engine investment fund, which will see more than £250 million invested in smaller businesses across our region, will be a boost for the local economy and will go some way to ensuring that the progress made in recent years is built upon.
It is worth recognising the tremendous impact that the reform of business rates will have. As the Chancellor outlined on Wednesday, it will mean that 600,000 businesses will pay no business rates at all. The Federation of Small Businesses has said that its members welcome this as an “important step”, and I echo that sentiment. The further cut in corporation tax to 17% by 2020, the freeze on fuel duty, and the action on VAT on overseas firms to create a more level playing field are all welcome measures.
We must not lose focus, however, on enterprise policy and the idea of the “march of the makers”, which is particularly relevant. Manufacturing is key to the midlands and an important aspect of rebalancing our economy. As co-chair of the all-party group on manufacturing and a member of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, I have worked closely with industry to discuss and hear about some of the challenges that it faces. High-value manufacturing catapult centres have been a revelation, and I am pleased that the Government continue to back them, with more than £200 million of investment since 2011 and an increase in financial support in the latest autumn statement. Fostering an environment in which innovation thrives has to be a priority when thinking long-term, and these catapult centres, which bridge the gap between businesses, academia and some of the UK’s world-class research centres, are instrumental in achieving that. However, such action must be matched by a supply of skills, and apprenticeships are of huge significance. In my constituency, Warwick Trident College works with industry—it partners with industry—and is providing hundreds of students with the necessary skills to succeed. Empowering further education colleges to extend the provision of tailored courses should be an important part of the Government’s future apprenticeship agenda.
Another underestimated sector is video games, which contributes a huge amount to our economy, not least in my constituency. There is no doubt about the value of the games industry to the economy: we are talking about £1.4 billion in gross value added, support for 23,900 jobs nationally and the generation of £429 million in tax receipts. We must continue to support this very important sector.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
It has been a bad week for the Chancellor. It was his eighth Budget and sixteenth economic statement, so he ought to know better. The Budget unravelled in 24 hours and then it got worse: outrage at PIP cuts as it became clear that the disabled were being sacrificed for the rich; education in chaos as he forced academisation on every school, using our kids in his war against local government; stealth cuts on the NHS and local government, with changes to employer pension contributions; and, to cap it all, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions giving in after six years.
This latest mess only builds on the Chancellor’s catalogue of failure. He is still nowhere near eliminating the deficit, despite his plans to have done so two years ago. In February, we had the lowest manufacturing output for four years. National debt is up 50% under this Chancellor—up to an eye-watering £1.6 trillion—and he has lurched from one missed target to another. He has blamed everybody and everything except himself. He blamed the Greeks. He blamed the Queen for having a jubilee holiday. He even blamed the snow. He did not find any money down the back of the settee this week, unlike the £27 billion he found miraculously before Christmas.
Who pays for the Chancellor’s folly? Who else but the poor, the vulnerable and the sick—those least able to fight back. The Resolution Foundation has him bang to rights. It showed that what the Budget really means is that on average the richest will get a £225 rise, while the poorest might get a measly rise of £10 a year. In fact, it shows that, with other changes and the cuts announced since last year, the richest in our nation can expect to be £235 a year better off, while the poorest will be £375 a year worse off by the end of this Parliament. He is the Robin Hood-in-reverse Chancellor. He has made a career out of making the poorest in our country even poorer.
It is worse than that, however, because in an amazing show of puffed-up pride, the Chancellor stated in his speech that the northern powerhouse is
“the most radical devolution of power in modern British history.”—[Official Report, 16 March 2016; Vol. 607, c. 960.]
Has he not heard what is happening in Scotland and in Northern Ireland, where they are running their own affairs, getting extra money and having proper devolution?
Mary Glindon
Does my hon. Friend agree that devolution for the north-east is no deal at all? It is a raw deal, because we cannot even agree between councils what we want. We are just not getting the real democracy we need.
Mr Anderson
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I will come on to the north-east in a moment.
The Chancellor should be aware of what is happening in this city, where £2,000 a head is being spent on transport, while in my part of the world the figure is £5 a head. Where is the fairness in that?
The institutions of devolution were set up properly under a Labour Government who trusted the people with referendums and democratic discussion, but that is unlike what has happened in my part of the world. It is one thing to exaggerate—we all do it in this House, and I am as guilty as anybody else, believe it or not—but last week the Chancellor said from the Dispatch Box that
“powerful elected Mayors have been agreed for Manchester, Liverpool, Tees Valley, Newcastle and Sheffield.”—[Official Report, 16 March 2016; Vol. 607, c. 960.]
At least in the case of Newcastle, that is simply untrue. Newcastle is not being offered an elected mayor. That is exactly as it should be, as it is less than four years since the people of that great city rejected a mayor in a referendum by 62% to 38%. What is actually on offer is an elected mayor for the north-east, but that has certainly not been agreed yet. In fact, this morning Gateshead Council, one of seven councils involved, threw that out. Northumberland Council says is will agree to it only with certain additional powers that do not look like being given. Durham County Council has already said it wants a delay and not to be forced to make a decision on Thursday on proposed legislation that has not even gone through this House and will not do so until November.
So did the Chancellor—the great manipulator; the political strategist; the man who does not get out bed in the morning without weighing up the political advantage; the Machiavelli of Downing Street—make a mistake? He might have. If he made a mistake by saying that that had been agreed in the north-east, he should come and apologise for it. If he did not make a mistake, however, and if he deliberately tried to mislead the House, he should come back here and tell the truth—that he was deliberately misleading the nation and pretending that the so-called northern powerhouse was up and running in the north-east of England, as it is struggling to do in the rest of England. I have been really chuffed in these past two days to hear the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) and the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson)—I never, ever thought I would agree with the hon. Member for Peterborough—share exactly the same concerns as me and my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon), and saying very clearly that what is on offer is not fair, not democratic and not open to proper consultation.
The proof is in what the Chancellor said last Wednesday. This is a party political Chancellor who puts his and his party’s interests first. He said last week, in relation to the £20 million for building houses in the south-west:
“it is proof that when the south-west votes blue, their voice is heard loud here in Westminster.”—[Official Report, 16 March 2016; Vol. 607, c. 961.]
Unfortunately for those of us who vote red, our voice is never heard, but we are going to keep on shouting at ’em.
Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)
During the Chancellor’s opening speech today, I could not help but reflect that he should consider a job swap with his Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who did a much better job of trying to defend the indefensible in the Chamber yesterday. The Chancellor could have improved his performance by saying sorry—sorry to all the disabled people he has frightened over the last few days—but not for the first time for him sorry proved to be the hardest word.
On the basis of the things the Chancellor does say, it is clear he has a habit of saying one thing and then doing quite another. He famously promised in 2010 that he would eliminate the deficit within five years, but it now seems it will take him another full Parliament to achieve that. He said the debt would peak at 70% of GDP in 2013-14 and then fall and that our debt-to-GDP ratio would fall every year, but he has missed those targets.
The borrowing figures out today do not make for good reading for the Chancellor. Public sector net borrowing was higher than expected last month. Last week, the borrowing forecast was lowered to £72.2 billion, but the ONS tells us that borrowing so far this fiscal year, from April 2015 to this February, is already at £70.7 billion, meaning he can only borrow £1.5 billion in March. I very much doubt this is achievable, given that in March 2015 he borrowed £7.4 billion. It is another target that is likely to be missed. He said he would cap welfare spending, but he has well and truly bust his own welfare cap. Last summer, when he launched the productivity plan, he said it would produce “world-beating productivity”. It is a damning indictment of that plan that the OBR has significantly revised down its forecasts of our national productivity.
The combination of all those factors means that as a nation we are ill prepared for the global cocktail of risks that the Chancellor himself has spent the last three months telling us about. His habit of saying one thing and doing another is something he has been getting away with for some time, but this year, finally, some on his own side are recoiling. His iteration of that famous phrase “We’re all in it together” was too much for the former Work and Pensions Secretary. Taking money from the disabled and cutting capital gains tax for the better-off was more than he could bear—and he is not exactly a soft touch. It comes to something when the Government are deemed too right wing even for him.
The Government’s retreat is welcome, but with it comes a hole in the Budget and a scorecard that no longer adds up. The scorecard already had the air of surrealism about it. Many people play fantasy football, but it seems the Chancellor plays fantasy Budget. The fiscal forecast for 2019-20 suggests that in one year we will go from a £21.4 billion deficit to a £10.4 billion surplus—never mind that we will never have reduced the deficit by that much in any year since 2010; never mind that the fiscal charter, introduced in October, has already been broken; never mind the retreat from the cuts to PIP.
The Chancellor has reigned over a litany of missed targets—growth down, productivity down, fiscal rules broken, a fantasy scorecard. The resignation of the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) puts the attention squarely back where it should be—on the Chancellor’s ability to deliver what he says he will—and it has become clear, especially over the last few days, that he has utterly failed.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
I am among those whose names are on both amendments today. I congratulate, in particular, the hon. Members for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff), for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) and for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan), and I acknowledge the good work of Ministers on the important issue raised in amendment (b). I also acknowledge the thoughtful contributions today, including the critiques by the hon. Members for East Lothian (George Kerevan) and for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) on the issues of productivity and public sector investment.
On some of the more local aspects of the Budget, I must decry the fact that Northern Ireland gets very little out of the Budget, although that is not all the fault of Ministers. A lot of it is the fault of a dereliction of initiative and responsibility on the part of our own devolved Executive. They have not made the case for city deals in Northern Ireland. They have certainly refused for a very long time to make the case for a city deal for Derry, pretending instead that city deals were for England, which did not have devolution. That completely ignored the fact that much work on city deals has been done in Scotland and Wales. Some of them are represented in the Budget. I know that the city deals, in terms of the northern powerhouse, are not all necessarily what the Chancellor puffs them up to be, but they are initiatives worth pursuing, and we in Northern Ireland have been left out of them.
As for what is in the Budget for Northern Ireland, I welcome the spending for the air ambulance coming from the LIBOR fines. I and others had lobbied for that. Billed as a big gain for us are the enhanced capital allowances for an enterprise zone in Coleraine—a zone that should have been in Derry, which is the place of the highest unemployment. It is intended that Coleraine can benefit from Project Kelvin—a project that was initially meant to benefit Derry in the first place and other places on both sides of the border. This has happened courtesy of a letter from the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister to the Chancellor before the 2014 Budget, asking for that enterprise zone so that Coleraine could benefit from Project Kelvin.
As for the wider arguments around PIP, having listened to the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) and to the Chancellor on both his Budgets, I think we have tuned into the cognitive dissonance game, whereby each gives an account of their motives and purposes on the record that are far removed from my sense of what is really happening and certainly far removed from my constituents’ experience.
I am one of 22 who voted against the introduction of the welfare cap nearly two years ago in March 2014, and I am very glad that I did. We said at the time that while it was being bubble-wrapped as a neutral budgetary tool, it would be a cuts weapon in the hands of the Treasury—and that is exactly what it has been. What we heard from the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions at the weekend was essentially that the welfare cap, which he voted for and used to boast about, has become simply a search engine for benefit cuts by the Treasury. We saw that in the summer Budget when the Chancellor revised the welfare cap downwards by £46.5 billion over four years. It is no wonder that we then saw other cuts being pursued.
We need to hear exactly what is going to be done with the welfare cap in future. Is it the case from what we heard from the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions yesterday that the attempt to have further legislative change on welfare is going to be abandoned, or will the welfare cap be used to impose cash-limited administrative decisions on rates, rules, interpretations around criteria and so forth so that the cuts will effectively be stealth cuts? Yes, Parliament will be spared any legislative cuts, but the cuts will still be there by administering the welfare cap ruthlessly.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
Oh—thank you very much, Mr Speaker. [Laughter.] I have been here so long that I was falling into a general stupor. I am so pleased to have you back in the Chair. It is pleasure to be here under your chairmanship, and I welcome you back.
Over the last couple of days, I have taken some time to think about when a Budget was either as bad or has unravelled as quickly as this one. I thought of this Chancellor’s Budget of 2012, with its pasty tax and caravan tax, and I was reminded today of the failed Budgets of the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) in the early ’90s. He raised VAT on fuel, including gas and electricity, and was defeated on it. However, after 24 years in the House, I cannot think of a Budget that has unravelled so quickly, or in such a damaging fashion, as the one proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer today.
We will vote on the Budget at 7 o’clock, when we do not even know—because we have not had an answer from the Chancellor today—from where the £4.4 billion loss of revenue from the appalling cut that he initially proposed will come. He said, “Trust me: we will discuss this in the autumn”, but it strikes me that we cannot wait until the autumn, given that we have a vote this evening. I hope that the Chief Secretary will respond to those central points when he winds up the debate.
The Chancellor admitted today that he had made a mistake. He admitted that he had made a U-turn. I put it to the House that this is no mistake, and no U-turn. This is simply the Chancellor who could not get his proposals through the House of Commons. The values that led him to make the choices that he made last week—the values that led him to choose to take money from disabled people in personal independence payments, and the values that led him to cut capital gains and business taxes—were values that he still holds today. If he could have got those measures through the House, he would have done so. His central value is one which ensures that we see a shift from the poor to the rich, that we have a small state, and that members of an out-of-touch elite are managing issues that they know little about, and care little about. I hope that the Chief Secretary, who represents Chelsea and Fulham, will accept that he lives in a bubble that does not relate to the lives of the vast majority of people in the constituencies that we represent.
On my patch, more than 1,200 people would have lost those personal independence payments. The fact is that the Chancellor has changed his mind not because of his desire to make the world better, but because his values would have been defeated, and defeated, dare I say it, by some of his own colleagues who faced the wrath of their constituents.
Time is limited, but I want to say three more things. First, we need to look at spending on infrastructure, including infrastructure in areas like north Wales. The Chancellor announced welcome money for Manchester airport, but we need a rail link to Manchester from north Wales. We need to think about how we can develop the north Wales economy with extra support for the HS2 route from Crewe to north Wales. We need to think about how we can electrify the rail network. That would be positive, valued investment, and we need to make it in a united European Union whose benefits are shared throughout the United Kingdom for all the people of the United Kingdom.
I take just one positive thing from the Chancellor’s Budget today: the Government’s commitment to campaign for a yes vote on 23 June. I look forward to working with them to achieve that yes vote for the good of the United Kingdom, and the good of north Wales.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am afraid that, so that I can try to accommodate the maximum number of Members who have not yet spoken, I must reduce the time limit on Back-Bench speeches to three minutes, with immediate effect.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
Let me begin like this.
“My husband was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer and has not been able to work since. We are now reliant on the ESA he receives. There is nothing more that either of us want than for life to somehow return to normal and for him to be able to return to the job he loves. We did not choose these dreadful circumstances—the benefits system is intended to protect those in society as much as possible when things go badly wrong. Forcing people in very difficult circumstances into poverty seems an outrageous way for any government to behave.”
That is a letter from one of my constituents, and she is absolutely correct. More than 9,000 Brent residents rely on ESA to live independently and with dignity. Their income has been cut by £30 per week, and the cut in the PIP would have caused 640,000 disabled people to lose up to a further £3,500 a year by 2020. It is therefore with great relief that many of them will have watched the Government’s U-turn on the proposed £4.4 billion cut. However, disabled people in my constituency have already suffered real hardship under this Government as a result of the bedroom tax, the benefit cap, the benefits uprating policy, the scrapping of disability living allowance, and the 12-month time limit on contributory ESA.
Yesterday the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said in his statement that the Government would not be making further cuts in to the welfare budget, but that gives the Chancellor a serious problem. He has a fiscal charter which enshrines in law that he must achieve a budgetary surplus by 2020. Last Wednesday, he believed that in order to meet that fiscal charter, he had to make £4.4 billion of cuts affecting the most vulnerable people in our society, because he wanted to cut corporation tax and capital gains tax and to raise the higher-rate income tax threshold to benefit the very richest. If he is genuinely not seeking to identify other cuts in services to offset that £4.4 billion, it is essential that we are told how he does propose to balance the books. The choice is simple: he must make further cuts in services, increase taxes, or fail to meet his own fiscal charter.
The inescapable facts of the Chancellor’s record will come back to haunt him. In 2010, he promised to balance the books by 2015. He did not. This year, he has a deficit of £72 billion. He has a debt-to-GDP ratio of 83.7%, and productivity failure means that manufacturing still lags behind its 2008 level. This is the failing Budget of a failing Chancellor who lacked the courage to come to this House and explain its collapse yesterday. That failure branded him a coward. Today he came to the House, but his failure to apologise to the most vulnerable in our society has branded him a nasty coward.
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
For six years now, we have had Budgets made on the basis of targets and rules announced by the Chancellor, which have then informed the Government’s spending choices. Each time, the Chancellor has set out his targets as an iron necessity, suggesting that any deviation from them meant that those guilty of the deviation could not be trusted with the public finances, yet time after time, the deviation has been his. The traps he has fallen into have been traps of his own making.
The Chancellor began in the last Parliament by telling us that he would eliminate the deficit within five years. He failed to do so. His strategy of austerity was so successful that he announced it would be necessary to carry it on for two Parliaments, rather than just for the intended one. Instead of eliminating the deficit, he roughly halved it. That was the same pace of deficit reduction that Labour had asked for, but which he dismissed at the time as irresponsible profligacy.
Then, in this Parliament, there were three rules. First, there was a welfare cap designed to show how tough the Chancellor was on welfare. It lasted barely six months after the election. He was forced to break it, in his U-turn on tax credit cuts in the autumn statement, by the justified anger at his hitting the working poor who were trying to do the right thing by themselves and their families. His second fiscal rule involved a pledge to reduce debt year on year. Another fiscal rule made, another one broken. The Office for Budget Responsibility’s verdict is:
“The Budget measures make little difference to net debt in 2015-16, so we expect that target still to be missed.”
That leaves only his target for a surplus in 2019-20, which the OBR rates his chances of meeting as no better than 50:50.
This was supposed to be a Budget that did not frighten the horses, yet it has fallen apart in a matter of days. Whatever the motivations of the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), he has exposed the reality of the approach of the Chancellor and the Prime Minister to Budget-making: make up a rule, then pick on the same group of low-income people to pay for it time after time. The right hon. Gentleman has described the measure as “unfair” and “divisive”, but perhaps his most damning statement is that he believes the Chancellor targets the non-pension part of the Department for Work and Pensions budget because it relates largely to a group of people who do not vote Conservative.
The Chancellor says that we are all in this together, but we cannot all be in it together if the Budget is a series of tax giveaways on thresholds for higher earners, capital gains tax cuts and other measures that, in the main, go to the better-off while disabled people are expected to take a £4 billion hit. The cuts to the disabled have been abandoned, at least for now, but the bigger impact involves not just one spending measure. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor prided themselves on fashioning a one nation compassionate Conservatism, but that claim has now been turned to dust by this Chancellor’s Budget. This is not a reformed Conservative party; it is the same old Conservative party, rewarding those it thinks will vote for it and punishing those it thinks will not. It is not just one spending measure that has been killed; it is the whole project of one nation compassionate Conservatism.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
Most Budgets lose a bit of their lustre as the days wear on, but this one started to disintegrate before it was delivered, during its delivery and, spectacularly, afterwards. First there was the great pension reform that never materialised. Then the pound suffered a rocky period as Mr Memory—not!—tried to forget the deficit and the borrowing, and the fact that growth and exports should by now be seeing the sunny uplands as he had predicted. He then managed to knock down the share value of A.G. Barr, Britvic and Tate & Lyle with his clumsily scrabbled together announcement of the sugar tax. What we have learned over eight Budgets is that this guy has run out of excuses and is rapidly running out of friends. He is now correcting previous Budget errors—his errors. We see a cut in capital gains tax, which he increased in 2010, an increase in insurance premiums to pay for his cuts to flood defences, cuts in North sea taxes from the man who ignored advice and increased them in 2011, and a promised cut in business rates for small business, except that local authorities were promised such rates only four months ago, which is another £1.7 billion unaccounted for. The Government say that local authorities will be compensated, but will they be only blue authorities as usual?
What are we left with? We have the abolition of class 2 national insurance contributions, which on the surface will help the self-employed, although we need an assurance that it is not a cunning ploy to make them ineligible for employment and support allowance and another hidden welfare cut. Personal allowances will be raised, which is good for the top half of earners. There are also some new capital projects. The Chancellor is cutting corporation tax, which helps the service sector, but there is no sign of the rebalancing of the economy that he promised. There is nothing for manufacturing on capital allowances, and, of course, 9% of the catapult innovation resources is going to the Midlands and 46% to London. There is not a hint of support for the WASPI campaign. We have seen a legacy of 14% council tax increases, meaning an average of £162 for Birmingham households, to pay for his cuts to the police and social care. That is his plan for Birmingham.
In the fall-out of the Budget, we have been told that there are no new plans to attack the disabled. However, in a little-noted item, the Department for Work and Pensions is to receive £22 million to hire more staff to defeat disabled people’s claims at PIP tribunals. Maybe there will be more cuts for the disabled after all. The Chancellor has failed. He has broken every promise. He is finished.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
Thank you for calling me, Mr Speaker.
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
The words of Benjamin Franklin are as resonant and appropriate today as they were when he uttered them, especially in relation to this Government and their mismanagement of the public finances. The Government are failing to prepare our country by implementing, by their own parliamentarians’ admissions, short-termist policies that risk failure in the long term. They continue to unravel the fabric of our society by pursuing their relentless austerity agenda.
As we come to the end of the Budget debate, there is much to reflect on, particularly after a weekend of turmoil for the “party of Government”. As the Tory party tears itself apart over Europe and its horrible benefits cuts, the most-affected people of our nations have a painful wait to find out how they will be affected by the Tory cuts. The IFS has warned that British voters should “all be worried” about the risk of job cuts and lower wages amid growing concerns of another economic downturn. The Chancellor’s cuts have even been criticised by his own leader in Scotland, Ruth Davidson. That the party of Government has the temerity to self-style itself the party of working people is an absolute joke. It has a target to increase the number of disabled people working, yet it cuts employment and support allowance and other supports that enable people with disabilities to find employment.
It is good to see that the Chancellor is taking a lead from the SNP Government in Scotland by cutting business rates, showing that while the Government often lag behind in reacting, they occasionally listen and do the right thing. However, it is important that the system is easy for business to understand and navigate. I have already heard some businesspeople raising concerns about the complexities of working out the rates reduction. Similarly, support for the oil and gas industry is welcome, but the time taken to reach the decision was woeful. Tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs and investor confidence is faltering. Quite frankly, it is too little, too late. Both the SNP and the industry have called for a proper strategic review of the tax regime for the North sea and our wait continues.
The apprenticeship levy is allegedly designed to help the next generation to get into work, but we are still waiting for clarity on how it will be implemented. I have raised the double-charging of industries such as oil and gas, but we continue to wait for a response.
The Guardian reported after the Budget that IPSE chief executive Chris Bryce described the move to abolish class 2 national insurance contributions as a
“long overdue and welcome step.”
However, he also said:
“The Government missed the perfect opportunity to back self-employed mums by giving them the same maternity pay as employees. This measure was recommended in the recent self-employment review.”
The Chancellor has failed to achieve his own targets on debt, the deficit, trade and exports and has stubbornly failed to listen to calls to invest in the economy.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
I think we can all agree that this has been a pretty disastrous Budget, and that was the case even before the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) revealed the Government’s extraordinary mendacity in their pursuit of policies for political purposes rather than for the national economic interest. What is worse, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) said, they are hammering the working-age poor because they do not vote Conservative.
Even on the Chancellor’s own terms, it is a shocking state of affairs. He has breached two of his three fiscal rules. Indeed, this Budget might end the period of fiscal rules that we have enjoyed for the past two decades. He has failed to meet his commitments to get debt falling as a share of GDP each year and he has failed to cap welfare spending. He tried to sweeten that with a spoonful of sucrose replacement, but we all saw through it.
The Chancellor is on track to meet only his third target, because he is deploying all sorts of fiscal shenanigans. He is rescheduling capital investment and shifting a one-off boost to corporation tax receipts. We also have to find £3.5 billion in unprotected spending.
The Chancellor is now set to borrow £38 billion more over the course of this Parliament than he planned just four months ago. Worst of all, this Parliament of productivity has stalled at the first outing. The OBR is clear on the collapse of productivity, even over the past six months.
Where I do agree with the Government is on the risk posed to our economy by fears of Brexit. The latest evidence from the CBI spells out the immediate costs to the British economy. Why, at a time of such fragile economic growth, would we knowingly want to turn our back on one of the most successful single markets in the world?
The key issue that we look at today is the morality of this Budget. To balance the books, the Prime Minister has chosen to focus on the weakest and most vulnerable in society. As the IFS has reported, the Government’s tax and benefit changes have
“resulted in significant losses for those of working age in the bottom half of the income distribution.”
Then came the hit on the disabled, with the assault on PIP, now thankfully reversed. But who gained from all that? Well, it was those paying capital gains tax. Half went to 35,000 individuals with incomes of £100,000 a year or more. It is a totally shocking result. According to the Resolution Foundation, the poorest 30% of households are set to lose around £565 by 2020, while the richest 30% of households are set to gain around £280. That is the morality of the Conservative party, and that is why we will be voting against the Budget tonight.
Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)
Last week, the Chancellor told us that he would put stability first, choose the long term and deliver real opportunity and social mobility. I am afraid that this Government have not appeared very stable since that statement and, far from being long term, the Budget that was delivered only last week appears to have been abandoned before we have even come to vote on it.
I suppose there was some opportunity and social mobility, even if it was limited to the Department for Work and Pensions. The former Secretary of State revealed the simple truth in his resignation letter: this is a Chancellor who puts his career before the country. Even by his own fiscal rules, he has failed, and blaming Labour will just not wash. This was a Budget not for the long-term interests of the country, but for the short-term interests of his ambition to lead the country—an ambition that seems to have unravelled almost as fast as his Budget.
As remarkable as it is to watch what has unfolded on the Government Benches, my concern is what is happening for my constituents in Ashton-under-Lyne. My constituent Marie has worked all her life, but then, unfortunately, developed hymphoedema as a secondary of breast cancer. She should be entitled to a dignified life while managing her condition, and this Budget has sought to deny her that.
One borough that sits in my constituency is Oldham, and under this Government, Oldham is now the most deprived town in England, according to the latest figures of the Office for National Statistics. Since 2010, more than half of the council’s income has been taken away. Real jobs are lost, real services are withdrawn and the most vulnerable suffer the worst. Our local economy and businesses suffer. Meanwhile, councils such as Surrey, given minimal cuts to local government finance in the first place, now receive a sweetener of nearly £12 million on top. Guess what the two local authorities serving my constituency, Oldham and Tameside, received: a big fat zero. Of course, the Chancellor has revealed exactly why that is the case; people in my constituency do not vote for the Conservatives.
Cuts to ESA to fund tax cuts, proposed cuts for the working poor through tax credits and universal credit—if the cruelty was not bad enough, the incompetence is now becoming obvious as well. In the last Parliament, we saw plans to tax everything from caravans to pasties proposed and abandoned, and this year the Chancellor becomes the first Chancellor in history to have to accept not one but two amendments to his own Budget resolution just days after he tabled it. Mr Speaker, I do not need three minutes to tell you about this Chancellor. I have three words, and they are “Not good enough”.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
What a shambles from the Wizard of Osborne, with the revelation that the tin man, the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, has a heart. I do not really believe it myself—I believe that he is thinking of jobs after Brexit with the Mayor of London, but other people will have other views. Of course, we now have a new Secretary of State, the former Welsh Secretary, who has just done a U-turn on the Wales Bill and has now done a U-turn on disability payments. I never thought that crabs did anything other than move sideways, but there we are. He was cheering away at the Budget a few days ago, but apparently now he does not agree with it.
As usual, the Wizard of Osborne has blamed Labour, but let us not forget that in the 10 years to 2008 the economy grew under Labour by 40%, some 4% a year, whereas that figure is now about 2%. We left debt as a share of GDP at 55% and it is now 83%. Why is that? Because of economic failure and slow productivity growth. Why is that? Because we have low investment in research and development and in infrastructure compared with the rest of the developed world. In particular, that is focused on London and the south-east and not in the north, in Wales or elsewhere.
I welcome the sugar tax, which I have been fighting for and which is a good idea—taxing something bad to invest in something good while costing the health service less. Similarly, I would have liked the Chancellor to take bold steps on air pollution, as 40,000 people a year are dying from diesel pollution, costing £20 billion a year, but of course he did not have the guts to re-tilt the fiscal structure for taxes and incentives to promote a sustainable green transport system. Instead, we have this epidemic of pregnant women having their babies’ mental health affected, children losing their lung capacity and so on. It is time that the Chancellor took that seriously.
I welcome the reduction in the Severn bridge toll, but that could have been reduced to a quarter of the price to cover operational costs as opposed to half the price, as the Government will continue to make a large margin of profit by basically putting a tax on trade with Wales. I welcome the news that there might be a new city deal for Swansea and the fact that the Chancellor is still trying to support the EU. The reality is that if we do have Brexit, as IDS and others want, we will be turning our backs on a large market. The argument that we are essentially net importers does not follow because, in essence, that applies only to Germany and Spain.
Finally, I should mention the other stealth tax from employers’ contributions on pensions, which is a back-door cut for the Welsh Government that I resist. In a nutshell, this is a sheriff of Nottingham Budget that I resist.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
This was a Budget about words, not wisdom. I want to focus on that because we have now had six years of the Chancellor presiding over a very worrying economic picture while using a narrative to disguise the fragile place into which he has put our economy. It is also a Budget that exposed the worst aspects of the cruel, callous and uncaring Conservatives, crushing disabled people and some of the most vulnerable and economically disadvantaged groups in our society. Those actions over the past six years have worried me as the weaknesses in the structure of the economy have not been addressed and the economy has been used to deliver a political agenda, not productivity and not fiscal security.
This is leading to a risk shift, increasingly away from Government to local communities and individuals—those who cannot weather the storm. Politicians can use any words they want, but what lingers behind those words is what matters. Apprenticeships are not apprenticeships any more, the living wage is not a living wage, and affordable housing is unaffordable. Remember the phrase “long-term economic plan”? I will let hon. Members work that one out for themselves.
I know the impact of all this in my local community and on my local economy. York has a low-wage, insecure and high cost of living economy where housing is now inaccessible. We heard about the next generation being better off. With the debts that young people now carry and the difficulty in accessing housing, I was interested in the lifetime ISA, which will mean that the people who are least worse off will get £1,000, while those struggling with tax credit cuts and increased in-work poverty will feel the pinch.
I hang my head in shame at the way that disabled people are treated in the Budget. No compassion there. That takes me back to the economic picture which I worry so much about. The Chancellor has borrowed more than all Labour Chancellors put together throughout history, and wants to borrow even more now. The question is what he will do with that money. We know from our economic experts how to invest that money to lead not to a growing debt, but to growing productivity. When the Chancellor has had to cut his own growth targets twice in the past six months, from 2.4% to 2.2% and now to 2%, he is admitting that his economic plan is not working. He did not clear the deficit in the previous Parliament, and it seems that with this omnishambles Budget he will not do so in this Parliament either.
I am worried, and I am most worried about the people I represent. In six years of low productivity, their insecurity and risks are rising, the local economy in York is totally inequitable—a two-speed economy, as it is known, speeding up for those who are well off—
Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
I would like to focus my speech on the announcements in the Budget that all schools will be forced to become academies by 2020. This will lead to a fundamental shift in the way education is managed in this country, turning education into a business. I am concerned that, like most businesses, it will benefit the richer, and leave behind those who most need educational reform. This is a concern echoed by the public. More than 100,000 people have signed a petition to hold a public inquiry and a referendum on turning all schools into academies.
I have a history of campaigning against forced academisation. Before becoming an MP, I campaigned against forced academisation in Haringey. The experience taught me how much community support there is for the state sector in Britain, and how much people care about their schools having the right priorities for their children. Forced academisation is a costly exercise. The timing of this move appears highly questionable. At a time when councils, especially Labour-run councils, are having their budgets cut by 79%, and when they are having to make severe cuts to valuable front-line services, money spent on forced academisation seems like a political exercise, rather than money well spent.
Roy Perry, chairman of the Local Government Association’s children and young people board, stated:
“With mixed evidence about academisation improving standards and when public spending is facing significant cuts imposing academisation on schools regardless of local opinion cannot be an appropriate use of public money.”
This policy was not in the Conservative manifesto. There needs to be proper debate and scrutiny, looking into the cost and how the policy will affect local communities.
Academies do not solve the big problems facing our schools—problems of a shortage of teachers, a shortage of head teachers, and increasing class sizes. Until we look at all those aspects, we should not proceed with academisation.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
Is this a Budget where those with the broadest shoulders bear the greatest burden, or is it one that cuts support for those who are already struggling, such as the parents and carers of people with learning disabilities whom I met in Hounslow yesterday, who are bearing the brunt of service and benefit cuts? The Resolution Foundation has shown that the poorest 30% of households are set to lose around £565 per annum by 2020, while the richest 30% are set to gain around £280. Is it not right to suggest, as the former Work and Pensions Secretary did, that we are not all in it together?
On housing, the lifetime ISA will, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, actually increase home prices, and it has added 0.3% in its Budget book to the level that house prices will reach by 2021. That proves that the Government plan to use taxpayers’ money to further inflate house prices out of the reach of young people, rather than to build affordable homes for rent that help people on low incomes to have a permanent home over their heads.
Let me move on to the topic of today’s budget debate: business and the economy. First, investment in infrastructure is essential for future growth, but business investment is falling, and the Government are set to spend just over half the level spent by the Government of 2010. Britain is set to slip yet further down the international rankings on infrastructure investments.
Secondly, are not skills a crucial element of our economic infrastructure? There is nothing in the Budget to help West Thames College, which, like all further education colleges, faces a 21% funding cut, resulting in a cut in courses and in the number of students being trained. There is nothing to provide the essential step change in skills that the UK economy needs.
Finally, on the 19% gender pay gap, the Women and Equalities Committee concluded today that not using women’s skills fully costs the UK economy £36 billion or 2% of GDP. There is nothing in the Red Book to address that, and nor is there anything to address the fact that 81% of the Budget cuts have fallen on women.
So, is this a Budget from a Chancellor with a track record of growth and stability, or is it a Budget that yet again has to revise his figures on growth, productivity and exports downwards? I conclude by using words from the former Work and Pensions Secretary and by asking what the Chancellor cares more about—the “fiscal self imposed restraints” or the “national economic interest”.
Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)
May I put on record my condolences to the people of Brussels and Belgium? My home town has been twinned with the town of Mons for more than 50 years, and the current Mayor of Mons—Elio Di Rupo—is the former Prime Minister of Belgium. I would therefore like to make sure my views are recorded.
Anything I say about the Chancellor in relation to the Budget will be as nothing compared with the thrashing he received over the weekend from his colleagues and particularly from the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) or, conversely, with the assault that the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green received in retaliation. It was the nasty party in full flow, arguing among themselves for all to see. If Conservative Members do that to themselves, hon. Members can imagine how easy it is for them to do the same to disabled people.
Before our very eyes, the acrid smoke from the smoke-and-mirrors Budget is starting to choke the Chancellor, and the mirrors have cracked. As for compassionate Conservatives, they would not know a good samaritan if he crossed the road to help them—by their standards, they would expect to be mugged. Expecting the country, at this point in the whole unfolding charade, to believe that a mass damascene conversion has taken place among Conservative Members is stretching credulity to its limits.
The Chancellor is fond of talking about cocktails: the problems faced by the economy are the result of a cocktail of external pressures—oil prices, the squeeze in China, the instability in the middle east—that have little to do with him. In my view, what we have seen is more cock-up than cocktail. According to the Chancellor, that has nothing to do with the fact that, as John Humphrys pointed out on the “Today” programme, he has missed virtually every target he has set himself.
Labour Members would be impressed by the conversions we have seen if we did not smell a rat. At the end of the day, however, we all remember the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green punching the air at the autumn statement and trying to claim that the Chancellor was Mr Christmas. Evidently the Chancellor had laid his hands on another £27 billion, and of course Conservative Members were all cheering and chinking glasses. Well, the chinking of glasses is often followed by a hangover, and the hangover is on its way. The Government are going to have to deal with the hangover, because they cannot and must not—and we will not tolerate it—make people in the most vulnerable positions the fall guys for the arrogance, the incompetence and the brass neck of this Chancellor.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
It was striking how little the Chancellor had to say about science and innovation in the Budget. Nearly 60,000 people are employed in the Cambridge cluster, and Cambridge is home to over 1,500 tech companies with a combined annual revenue of about £13 billion. This Government’s record on science is erratic. Investment in research and development is only at 0.49% of GDP—below the OECD average of 0.67% and well below the EU target of 3%. That means that the UK comes last in the EU 27 and eighth in the G8 in terms of R and D spending as a proportion of GDP. The annual funding shortfalls resulting from the 2010 flat-cash settlement for the resource science budget meant a £1 billion loss to the UK research base over the lifetime of the previous Parliament.
There was some relief when the Government committed to protecting the science resource budget in real terms over the course of this Parliament, but £1.5 billion of this funding has been reserved for a new global challenges fund—a new funding commitment tucked within existing science resource funding. I would welcome clarification of how this will impact on current scientific research. It should be noted that funding for innovation and wider research sits outside the ring-fenced science budget. This funding supports companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, in translating their research into products.
Like many others, I was very disappointed by the Government’s decision to bin research grants for companies and replace them with loans. This will have a significant impact on key early-stage enterprises, which have explained that they will struggle to secure investment if they have a hefty loan on the books. Sadly, the Government did not listen. They should, because, as I have said on previous occasions, Cambridge’s future success is not assured. Last week, new data from the Office for National Statistics showed that house prices in Cambridge have risen faster since 2010 than anywhere else in the country. If people cannot live in the city, they are then forced to live outside, and that is why local transport matters so much.
I turn to the devolution deal—so-called. Let us be clear: Cambridge and the area around us need the freedoms to make the investments needed to tackle the housing and transport challenges we face. That was why Cambridgeshire councils, business and universities came together to create the Case for Cambridge—a thoughtful and sensible set of proposals put to Government last year. However, instead of responding positively to that locally agreed and developed proposal, the Government came back very late in the day with a completely different solution, and basically said, “You’ve got three weeks to take it or leave it.” Unsurprisingly, the reaction has been furious. The local enterprise partnership has rejected it, individual business leaders have rejected it, the city council has rejected it, and today Cambridgeshire County Council rejected it. This is no way to deal with the huge and urgent challenge that faces one of the most successful parts of the country: it puts that very success at risk. I hope that those involved in this process—ultimately it is Treasury-led—will reflect on what has happened and reopen discussions in good faith with Cambridgeshire. Cambridgeshire needs a deal, but it needs a deal for Cambridgeshire, not for the Treasury.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
Today we have heard contributions from 30 Opposition Members and only 14 Government Members—the Government ran out of contributors quite a while ago.
The Chancellor has had to be dragged back to the Chamber today to explain what on earth has happened to his Budget which, after all, is still only six days old and already contains three U-turns. He put in a bravura performance, but there was not a windmill that he did not tilt at or a straw man that he did not set up. Even then, he had the gall to claim that he supports the vulnerable. At the end of all that sound and fury, however, his Budget was still a mess, and the idea of one nation Conservatism is still a national joke.
What we actually got was a botched Budget that has disastrously unravelled in just a few short days. It was a Budget created by a Chancellor far more concerned with advancing his own interests than advancing the national interest. We all knew that this was a Budget that had to be seen through the lens of the Chancellor’s own long-cherished ambition to become leader of the Tory party and Prime Minister, and that the chief interest the Chancellor was promoting was his own. In an effort to curry favour with his own side, he announced increases in tax thresholds and cuts to capital gains tax, and he decided that cuts to disability benefits would pay for them.
The Chancellor has presented a catastrophic Budget—omnishambles does not do it justice. The Prime Minister had ordered him to produce a “safety first” budget; instead, he has succeeded in producing a Budget that has torn the Cabinet apart. Despite his performance today, we see a Chancellor at bay, on the run from attacks in his own party. He has completely lost control of his own Budget. He is now so weakened that he is accepting amendments on the tampon tax and solar panels because he knows he would lose the votes, and he dare not let that happen. He has had to reappear in the Chamber today to explain where it all went wrong.
It took less than 24 hours for the Chancellor’s triumph of Wednesday to turn into chaos at the weekend. We have seen a Government in complete and utter disarray and a Chancellor who has only succeeded in shredding his own reputation. Today, we see the utter collapse of his authority. His popularity has halved since the election, and two thirds of people who voted Conservative last May do not think that he is up to the job of being Prime Minister.
The Chancellor’s Budget was rightly savaged as deeply unfair by his then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith). Back Benchers’ outrage grew as they realised that the huge cuts to disability support were being used to fund a tax giveaway for the well-off. We then had Panic Friday, as the Prime Minister realised that his party was in revolt and ordered a hasty retreat on the Chancellor’s biggest revenue raiser in the Red Book. Then came a dramatic Cabinet resignation by the Work and Pensions Secretary, who had reached the end of his tether. On Manic Monday, the cowardly Chancellor went missing, sending out his hapless junior to cover for him.
The former Work and Pensions Secretary made clear his opposition in his devastating resignation letter, in which he said that cuts to disability benefits were
“not defensible in the way they were placed within a Budget that benefits higher earning taxpayers.”
That was this Chancellor’s choice. The former Work and Pensions Secretary called the disability cuts that the Chancellor presented last week “morally indefensible”. The former Work and Pensions Secretary has questioned the entire moral basis of the last six years of Conservative government, and weak assertions from Conservative Members that they are really, really compassionate are revealed for what they really, really are: hollow nonsense. The former Work and Pensions Secretary was also clear that he thought that the Chancellor’s welfare cap was unsustainable, and he questioned the motives of his erstwhile Cabinet colleagues, slamming the Chancellor’s indefensible Budget. He said
“they’re losing sight of the direction of the travel that they should be in”
and
“it is in danger of drifting in a direction that divides society rather than unites it. And that I think is unfair.”
It is still unclear in what form this Budget statement will survive, but it now contains an abandoned £4.4 billion of disability benefit cuts and an unspecified £3.5 billion cut in public expenditure. This is a Budget that continues to disintegrate before our very eyes. The Chancellor has given us a Budget that is an economic failure, a moral failure and a political failure. The OBR forecast accompanying the Budget formed a sharply deteriorating backdrop, caused mainly by his own failures at home. Productivity has been revised down and down. Growth has been revised down and down. Earnings have been revised down and are still lower in real terms than they were when the Chancellor took office. It is the same for business investment, which was downgraded by two thirds this year alone. That is not the forecast that most concerns the Chancellor, however. I do not know if you are a betting man, Mr Speaker, but over the weekend the odds on the Chancellor moving next door to No. 10 have slipped from a healthy 2:1 to a distant 4:1. He is on the slide—and fast.
This is a Chancellor who has an astonishing record of missing his own targets. He promised to protect our triple A credit rating—he has failed. He said he would eliminate the deficit by 2015—he has failed. In his 2012 Budget, he set out a target to double UK exports to £1 trillion by 2020—he has failed, admitting he will miss it by £357 billion. In his last Budget, the Chancellor established three targets he wished to be judged by in this Parliament. First, he promised to keep social security spending below an arbitrary cap he imposed on himself. He has, by his own admission, failed, and he will fail every year of this Parliament, and that was even before he was forced to row back on the cuts to PIP.
Secondly, the Chancellor promised to reduce debt as a percentage of GDP in every year. He will fail, by the end of the month, to meet his target, and he only met it last year by flogging off public assets, such as bits of Royal Mail. Thirdly, he has promised to have an overall surplus by 2020, and that rule is now dangling by the thinnest of threads. The Red Book shows that he only hangs on to meeting his economically pointless surplus rule by a series of tricks the Joker would have been proud of, and a promise to cut borrowing by an unprecedented £32 billion in a pre-election year. These are fiscal gymnastics that would embarrass the dodgiest accountant. It does not take a genius to see that this amounts to an economic plan that has lost all credibility in the country, just as he is losing credibility in his own party.
This Budget is also a moral failure. It is a Budget with unfairness at its very heart, from a Chancellor who is making the wrong decisions for our country. Since 2010, over 1 million people have been forced to go to food banks, and over 1 million benefit claimants have been sanctioned, often for utterly trivial reasons. Dying people have been found fit to work—one woman in a coma was found fit to work—and people have committed suicide. Homelessness has soared, and the bedroom tax has caused untold misery. The Chancellor has talked about workers and shirkers, stigmatising all benefit claimants, including those with disabilities, and that has led to a discernible increase in hate crimes against them. I hope the Chancellor is proud of that record, but it is clear that this is not and can never be called compassionate Conservatism.
This is a Budget that planned to eliminate the deficit on the backs of the poor and some of the most vulnerable in our society. None of this is morally justifiable. Never again will this Government be able to claim, “We’re all in this together”. Never again will they be able to don the mantle of compassionate Conservativism with any shred of credibility. This is a political failure of a Budget, as well as a moral failure and an economic failure. This is a Chancellor who has mishandled tax credit cuts, who has pushed and lost on Sunday trading and who has now mishandled disability benefit cuts, too. He is a Chancellor who has lost control of his Budget and lost control of his leadership hopes. This is an omnishambles Chancellor who has produced an immoral Budget, which is disintegrating before our eyes. That is why we will vote against it tonight.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Greg Hands)
May I associate myself with the comments made by the Chancellor, Members on both Front Benches and many Back Benchers about the terrible terrorist outrages in Brussels this morning? I remind everybody that we stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Belgium, as we in this country have done many times before against the scourge of terrorism.
The past four days of this debate have certainly been lively. I want to look back not just four days, but more than six years. Let us cast our minds back to six years ago, in 2010, when the whole world doubted the UK’s ability to pay its way. Now the UK is forecast to grow faster than any other major advanced economy in the world.
Six years ago, we were borrowing 25p out of every £1 that we spent—almost £6,000 per household per annum. Now that figure is down to 10p, and will be 7p next year. Six years ago our deficit was more than 10% of GDP. Now we are three years away from building that surplus. Our economy is a full 12.6% bigger than it was in 2010 when my right hon. Friend delivered his first Budget. Our foreign exchange reserves have doubled, and every day has seen an average of 1,000 jobs created. Inflation is low, poverty and inequality are falling, and wages are rising. Yes, that is due to our long-term economic plan.
We can only have a fair and compassionate society on the back of a strong economy. That is what the British electorate asked us to do in May, and that is what we are doing. We are proud of the jobs created over the past six years, proud of having lifted more than 1 million low-paid people out of income tax, proud of having introduced the national living wage, and proud of our record as a compassionate one-nation Conservative Government.
Let me respond to some of the points raised today, partly because the shadow First Secretary of State failed to mention any of them. The hon. Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) raised a technical detail and asked, with reference to the tampon tax, what will happen to the money now allocated for that in the Budget. That was a one-year bidding process, and all the organisations will get the money that we announced on Wednesday. The relevant clause for that will be in the Finance Bill, which will be published on Thursday.
Various Conservative Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White), for South Dorset (Richard Drax), for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak), for Croydon South (Chris Philp) and for Dudley South (Mike Wood), my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke, and others, praised the wealth creators and business, and this is very much a Budget for business, wealth creators and enterprise. My hon. Friends the Members for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), the hon. Members for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) and for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods), and the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) all mentioned infrastructure spending—albeit with slightly differing views—and individual projects.
The Government remain on course to deliver £100 billion in infrastructure projects this Parliament. The Budget announced more for flood defences, and for transport projects in the north, London and right the way across England. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East raised a point about rough sleeping, and we are committing £110 million extra for that. No allocations have yet been made, but London is very much a focus of that additional money.
When the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Philip Boswell) spoke I had to stop and check that I had heard him correctly, because he spoke about a risk “in relation to the price of oil”. I can tell him something about a risk “in relation to the price of oil”, because if Scotland were to have separated on the SNP’s proposed date of this Thursday, it would now be facing a fiscal black hole of £19 billion, largely caused by a 98% collapse in oil revenue.
My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) called this a Budget for savers and the next generation. She is absolutely right, and the Lifetime ISA will apply even to those who do not put in the full £4,000 a year. We have also launched the Help to Save initiative, which will help lower-paid savers who are on universal credit or tax credits.
My hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) highlighted our income tax cuts, which deliver on our manifesto commitment—we are accelerating them for the low-paid, the lower-paid and the medium-paid.
We heard opposing speeches on the merits of the soft drinks industry levy from my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller), the hon. Member for Falkirk (John Mc Nally) and others. My hon. Friend raised a number of technical objections to the levy. We are consulting on the details and are keen to work with the industry on it, but hon. Members should make no mistake: we think it is the right thing to do to help to deal with the UK’s £27 billion per annum obesity problem.
The hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) thanked us on behalf of Northern Ireland for launching funding for the new air ambulance, which I know has been very well received. We are open to ideas on UK city deals coming from Northern Ireland, but I should say to him that the Stormont House agreement committed more than £2.5 billion to the Executive, which I think was very generous.
We heard from many former members of the Labour Treasury team—the shadow shadow Treasury team, as they have been called—including the right hon. Member for Delyn, and the hon. Members for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) and for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves). All protested at the policies and initiatives launched by the Government. I have two things to say to them. First of all, in all of the last Parliament, I do not recall any of them coming up with a single proposal to save money or cut spending, or to back any tax rise. More interestingly, not one of the shadow shadow Treasury team had a word of praise for their actual shadow Treasury team, which was absolutely compelling evidence of where they are going wrong.
It is because we have faced up to the facts and because we have taken the difficult decisions that our economy is fundamentally stronger, more resilient and better able to protect our families and households in uncertain times. Uncertain times are what we must currently deal with. Growth worldwide is slowing, commodity prices have fallen and productivity growth has been sluggish, particularly in the most advanced economies. The middle east remains unstable and global markets have experienced worrying turbulence. The UK is immune to none of that. Responsible government means preparing our economy for the challenges that lie ahead. It means ensuring that we never again find ourselves in the position we found ourselves in six years ago. It means that, when problems come up, we deal with them in full and early on.
Rachel Reeves
Many Labour Members have asked about the £4.4 billion black hole. Will the Chief Secretary to the Treasury please confirm whether that £4.4 billion will be plugged by further cuts to welfare, tax increases, spending cuts or more borrowing? It has to be one. Which is it?
Greg Hands
It is always good to hear from the shadow shadow Treasury team. I can tell the hon. Lady that more will be outlined in the course of this year in the autumn statement. However, we remain on course—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Members are becoming a little over-excitable. The Chief Secretary must be heard.
Greg Hands
We remain on course to deliver our budget surplus in 2019-20, which is far more than Labour ever achieved. I would have thought that the hon. Lady would take the opportunity to congratulate the Government on the new commitment to flood defences in Leeds, which she did not mention.
I will be working to find a further £3.5 billion of efficiencies by 2019-20 so that we deliver that surplus by the end of this Parliament. That means that we keep our economy on course, and we refuse to pass on the burden to our children and grandchildren.
At the same time, we will continue to reward aspiration, back growth, invest in education and help people get on in life—because this is a Budget that backs Britain’s businesses. It cuts the burden of business rates by £6.7 billion over the next five years, taking 600,000 of our smallest firms out of business rates altogether. It cuts the rate of corporation tax even further, to 17% in 2020, giving us the most competitive rate in the G7 and benefiting more than 1 million businesses. Through a £1 billion North sea oil and gas package, it is a Budget that helps Britain’s largest industry succeed in difficult economic times; through cuts to both the higher and basic rates of capital gains tax, it encourages investment—the lifeblood of Britain’s businesses; and, through the abolition of class 2 national insurance contributions, it creates a simpler tax system and a tax cut of more than £130 for the 3 million-plus self-employed people in Britain—this Government stand squarely behind them.
This is a Budget that puts cash into people’s pockets. It raises the tax-free personal allowance to £11,500 from next year, and the higher rate threshold to £45,000. We recognise that money should be in savings accounts as well as in pockets, so this is also the Budget that creates the lifetime ISA, helping people to buy their first home or save for their retirement. This is a Budget that freezes fuel duty, helping people every time they fill up their tank. It is a Budget that supports responsible drinkers; helps the nation’s pubs and gives a further boost to the Scotch whisky industry.
I recall seeing on the morning of the Budget the Scottish National party’s lead spokesman saying that he had three asks in this Budget, and he listed them on Twitter. They were to freeze fuel duty, to keep down duty on Scotch and to have a fiscal package for oil and gas. We have met all three of his asks and much more, and this is a very good Budget for Scotland, too.
It is a Budget that strengthens our tax base, through reforming the tax system so that it is in line with the realities of global, 21st-century economics. As I said, in this Budget we take action on the scourge of obesity, which, as well as putting unsustainable pressures on the NHS, ruins people’s health and quality of life, and costs the country about £27 billion a year.
Greg Hands
I do not have time to give way. Because we continue to get the public finances under control, our Budget—[Interruption.] I am sorry, but all the Labour MPs elected in 2010 and 2015 do not remember the last Labour Government, and that is part of their problem. Because we get the public finances under control, our Budget gives this country a stable base from which to support those in need of support. That is a point that too many on the Opposition Benches still do not get: there can only be true social justice on the back of a functioning economy. Had we not taken action in 2010, borrowing would have been £930 billion more by the end of the decade than it is now forecast to be. On a serious point, one more downturn and we could have lost control altogether in this country, and when that happens it is the poorest and the most vulnerable who are hit the hardest. So we say: never again. That is why we take action now, so we do not pay later.
To conclude, I am sure that some on the Opposition Benches will vote against the Budget tonight, but they will be voting against more money going to our schools. They will be voting against 600,000 small businesses being taken out of paying business rates altogether. They will be voting against support for our North sea oil and gas industry. They will be voting against increases for children’s healthcare. They will be voting against helping working people save for their future. They will be voting against lower taxes for the lowest paid. They will be voting against a better future for Britain.
I say that Members should vote for this Budget. Stability, security, prosperity is what the electorate asked us to provide last May and it is that which this Budget provides, and I ask the House to support it tonight.
Amendment (b) agreed to.
Amendment made: (a), after ‘importation’ in paragraph 2(a), insert—
‘other than in respect of value added tax on women’s sanitary products’.—(Paula Sherriff.)
Main Question, as amended, put.
Mr Speaker
I am now required under Standing Order No. 51(3) to put, without further debate, the Question on each of the Ways and Means motions numbered 2 to 69 on which the Bill is to be brought in, and on the motions on Procedure and Finance (Money). I should point out that motion No. 13 includes a schedule. These motions are set out in a separate paper distributed with today’s Order Paper.
I must inform the House that, for the purposes of Standing Order No. 83U, and on the basis of material put before me, I have certified that in my opinion the following founding motions published on 16 March 2016 and to be moved by the Chancellor of the Exchequer relate exclusively to England, Wales and Northern Ireland and are within devolved legislative competence. I am referring, as I feel sure colleagues are keenly aware, to the following motions:
45. Stamp duty land tax (calculating tax on non-residential and mixed transactions);
46. Stamp duty land tax (higher rates for additional dwellings etc.);
47. SDLT higher rate (land purchased for commercial use);
48. SDLT higher rate (acquisition under home reversion plan);
49. SDLT higher rate (properties occupied by certain employees);
50. Stamp duty land tax (co-ownership authorised contractual schemes);
57. Landfill tax (rates); and the motion on Procedure (Future Taxation) relating to rates of landfill tax.
Any of these motions on which the House may divide will be subject to double majority voting. With the leave of the House, I will put the Question on motions 2 to 7 together.
The Speaker put forthwith the Questions necessary to dispose of the motions made in the name of the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Standing Order No. 51(3)).
2. Income tax (charge and main rates)
Resolved,
That—
(1) Income tax is charged for the tax year 2016-17.
(2) For that tax year—
(a) the basic rate is 20%,
(b) the higher rate is 40%, and
(c) the additional rate is 45%.
And it is declared that it is expedient in the public interest that this Resolution should have statutory effect under the provisions of the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1968.
3. Dividends etc.
Resolved,
That provision may be made about distributions (within the meaning of the Tax Acts), including provision about rates of income tax on dividend income (within the meaning of the Income Tax Acts).
4. Taxable benefits (application of Chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Part 3 of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003)
Resolved,
That—
(1) Part 3 of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 (employment income: earnings and benefits etc treated as earnings) is amended as follows.
(2) In section 97 (living accommodation to which Chapter 5 applies), after subsection (1) insert—
“(1A) In determining for the purposes of this Chapter whether this Chapter applies to living accommodation provided for an individual it is immaterial whether or not the terms on which it is provided constitute a fair bargain.”
(3) In section 114 (cars, vans and related benefits to which Chapter 6 applies), after subsection (1) insert—
“(1A) In determining for the purposes of this Chapter whether this Chapter applies by virtue of subsection (1) to a car or van made available to an individual it is immaterial whether or not the terms on which the car or van is made available constitute a fair bargain.”
(4) For section 117 substitute—
“117 Meaning of car or van made available by reason of employment
(1) For the purposes of this Chapter a car or van made available by an employer to an employee or member of an employee’s family or household is to be regarded as made available by reason of the employment unless subsection (2) or (3) excludes the application of this subsection.
(2) Subsection (1) does not apply where—
(a) the employer is an individual, and
(b) the car or van is made available in the normal course of the employer’s domestic, family or personal relationships.
(3) Subsection (1) does not apply where—
(a) the employer carries on a vehicle hire business under which cars or vans of the same kind are made available to members of the public for hire,
(b) the car or van in question is hired to the employee or member in the normal course of that business, and
(c) in hiring that car or van the employee or member is acting as an ordinary member of the public.”
(5) In section 173 (loans to which Chapter 7 applies), after subsection (1) insert—
“(1A) In determining for the purposes of this Chapter whether a loan is an employment-related loan it is immaterial whether or not the terms of the loan constitute a fair bargain.”
(6) The amendments made by this Resolution have effect for the tax year 2016-17 and subsequent tax years.
And it is declared that it is expedient in the public interest that this Resolution should have statutory effect under the provisions of the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1968.
5. Taxable Benefits (diesel cars)
Resolved,
That—
(1) In section 24 of the Finance Act 2014 (cars: the appropriate percentage), omit the following (“the repealing provisions”)—
(a) subsection (2),
(b) subsection (6),
(c) subsection (10),
(d) subsection (11), and
(e) subsection (15).
(2) Any provision of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 amended or omitted by the repealing provisions has effect for the tax year 2016-17 and subsequent tax years as if the repealing provisions had not been enacted.
And it is declared that it is expedient in the public interest that this Resolution should have statutory effect under the provisions of the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1968.
6. Taxable Benefits (vans)
Resolved,
That—
(1) Section 155 of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 (cash equivalent of the benefit of a van) is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (lB)(a), for “2019-20” substitute “2021-22”.
(3) In subsection (1C), for paragraphs (b) to (e) substitute—
“(b) 20% for the tax year 2016-17;
(c) 20% for the tax year 2017-18;
(d) 40% for the tax year 2018-19;
(e) 60% for the tax year 2019-20;
(f) 80% for the tax year 2020-21;
(g) 90% for the tax year 2021-22.”
(4) The amendments made by this Resolution have effect for the tax year 2016-17 and subsequent tax years.
And it is declared that it is expedient in the public interest that this Resolution should have statutory effect under the provisions of the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1968.
7. Income tax (exemption for trivial benefits provided by employers)
Resolved,
That—
(1) The Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 323 insert—
“323ATrivial benefits provided by employers
(1) No liability to income tax arises in respect of a benefit provided by, or on behalf of, an employer to an employee or a member of the employee’s family or household if—
(a) conditions A to D are met, or
(b) in a case where subsection (2) applies, conditions A to E are met.
(2) This subsection applies where—
(a) the employer is a close company, and
(b) the employee is—
(i) a person who is a director or other office-holder of the employer, or
(ii) a member of the family or household of such a person.
(3) Condition A is that the benefit is not cash or a cash voucher within the meaning of section 75.
(4) Condition B is that the benefit cost of the benefit does not exceed £50.
(5) In this section “benefit cost”, in relation to a benefit, means—
(a) the cost of providing the benefit, or
(b) if the benefit is provided to more than one person and the nature of the benefit or the scale of its provision means it is impracticable to calculate the cost of providing it to each person to whom it is provided, the average cost per person of providing the benefit.
(6) For the purposes of subsection (5)(b), the average cost per person of providing a benefit is found by dividing the total cost of providing the benefit by the number of persons to whom the benefit is provided.
(7) Condition C is that the benefit is not provided pursuant to relevant salary sacrifice arrangements or any other contractual obligation.
(8) “Relevant salary sacrifice arrangements”, in relation to the provision of a benefit to an employee or to a member of an employee’s family or household, means arrangements (whenever made, whether before or after the employment began) under which the employee gives up the right to receive an amount of general earnings or specific employment income in return for the provision of the benefit.
(9) Condition D is that the benefit is not provided in recognition of particular services performed by the employee in the course of the employment or in anticipation of such services.
(10) Condition E is that—
(a) the benefit cost of the benefit provided to the employee, or
(b) in a case where the benefit is provided to a member of the employee’s family or household who is not an employee of the employer, the amount of the benefit cost allocated to the employee in accordance with section 323B(4),
does not exceed the employee’s available exempt amount (see section 323B).
323B Section 323A: calculation of available exempt amount
(1) The “available exempt amount”, in relation to an employee of an employer, is the amount found by deducting from the annual exempt amount the aggregate of—
(a) the benefit cost of eligible benefits provided earlier in the tax year by, or on behalf of, the employer to the employee, and
(b) any amounts allocated to the employee in accordance with subsection (4) in respect of eligible benefits provided earlier in the tax year by, or on behalf of, the employer to a member of the employee’s family or household who was not at that time an employee of the employer.
(2) The annual exempt amount is £300.
(3) For the purposes of subsection (1) “eligible benefits” means benefits in respect of which conditions A to D in section 323A are met.
(4) The amount allocated to an employee of an employer in respect of a benefit provided to a person (“P”) who—
(a) is a member of the employee’s family or household, and
(b) is not an employee of the employer,
is the benefit cost of that benefit divided by the number of persons who meet the condition in subsection (5) and are members of P’s family or household.
(5) This condition is met if the person is—
(a) a director or other office-holder of the employer,
(b) an employee of the employer who is a member of the family or household of a person within paragraph (a), or
(c) a former employee of the employer who—
(i) was a director or other office-holder at any time when the employer was a close company, or
(ii) is a member of the family or household of such a person.
(6) In this section “benefit cost” has the same meaning as in section 323A.”
(3) The amendment made by this Resolution has effect for the tax year 2016-17 and subsequent tax years.
And it is declared that it is expedient in the public interest that this Resolution should have statutory effect under the provisions of the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1968.
8. Travel expenses of workers providing services through intermediaries
Question put,
That—
(1) In Chapter 2 of Part 5 of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 (deductions for employee’s expenses), after section 339 insert—
“339A Travel for necessary attendance: employment intermediaries
(1) This section applies where an individual (“the worker”)—
(a) personally provides services (which are not excluded services) to another person (“the client”), and
(b) the services are provided not under a contract directly between the client or a person connected with the client and the worker but under arrangements involving an employment intermediary.
This is subject to the following provisions of this section.
(2) Where this section applies, each engagement is for the purposes of sections 338 and 339 to be regarded as a separate employment.
(3) This section does not apply if it is shown that the manner in which the worker provides the services is not subject to (or to the right of) supervision, direction or control by any person.
(4) Subsection (3) does not apply in relation to an engagement if—
(a) Chapter 8 of Part 2 applies in relation to the engagement,
(b) the conditions in section 51, 52 or 53 are met in relation to the employment intermediary, and
(c) the employment intermediary is not a managed service company.
(5) This section does not apply in relation to an engagement if—
(a) Chapter 8 of Part 2 does not apply in relation to the engagement merely because the circumstances in section 49(1)(c) are not met,
(b) assuming those circumstances were met, the conditions in section 51,52 or 53 would be met in relation to the employment intermediary, and
(c) the employment intermediary is not a managed service company.
(6) In determining for the purposes of subsection (4) or (5) whether the conditions in section 51, 52 or 53 are or would be met in relation to the employment intermediary—
(a) in section 50(l)(b), disregard the words “that is not employment income”, and
(b) read references to the intermediary as references to the employment intermediary.
(7) Subsection (8) applies if—
(a) the client or a relevant person provides the employment intermediary (whether before or after the worker begins to provide the services) with a fraudulent document which is intended to constitute evidence that, by virtue of subsection (3), this section does not or will not apply in relation to the services,
(b) that section is taken not to apply in relation to the services, and
(c) in consequence, the employment intermediary does not under PAYE regulations deduct and account for an amount that would have been deducted and accounted for under those regulations if this section had been taken to apply in relation to the services.
(8) For the purpose of recovering the amount referred to in subsection (7)(c)(“the unpaid tax”)—
(a) the worker is to be treated as having an employment with the client or relevant person who provided the document, the duties of which consist of the services, and
(b) the client or relevant person is under PAYE regulations to account for the unpaid tax as if it arose in respect of earnings from that employment.
(9) In subsections (7) and (8) “relevant person” means a person, other than the client, the worker or a person connected with the employment intermediary, who—
(a) is resident, or has a place of business, in the United Kingdom, and
(b) is party to a contract with the employment intermediary or a person connected with the employment intermediary under or in consequence of which—
(i) the services are provided, or
(ii) the employment intermediary, or a person connected with the employment intermediary, makes payments in respect of the services.
(10) In determining whether this section applies, no regard is to be had to any arrangements the main purpose, or one of the main purposes, of which is to secure that this section does not to any extent apply.
(11) In this section—
“arrangements” includes any scheme, transaction or series of transactions, agreement or understanding, whether or not enforceable, and any associated operations;
“employment intermediary” means a person, other than the worker or the client, who carries on a business (whether or not with a view to profit and whether or not in conjunction with any other business) of supplying labour;
“engagement” means any such provision of service as is
mentioned in subsection (l)(a);
“excluded services” means services provided wholly in the client’s home;
“managed service company” means a company which—
(a) is a managed service company within the meaning given by section 61B, or
(b) would be such a company disregarding subsection (l)(c) of that section.”
(2) In section 688A of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 (managed service companies: recovery from other persons), in subsection (5), in the definition of “managed service company”, after “section 61B” insert “but for the purposes of section 339A has the meaning given by subsection (11) of that section”.
(3) After section 688A of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 insert—
“688B Travel expenses of workers providing services through intermediaries: recovery of unpaid tax
(1) PAYE regulations may make provision for, or in connection with, the recovery from a director or officer of a company, in such circumstances as may be specified in the regulations, of amounts within any of subsections (2) to (5).
(2) An amount within this subsection is an amount that the company is to account for in accordance with PAYE regulations by virtue of section 339A(7) to (9) (persons providing fraudulent documents).
(3) An amount within this subsection is an amount which the company is to deduct and pay in accordance with PAYE regulations by virtue of section 339A in circumstances where—
(a) the company is an employment intermediary,
(b) on the basis that section 339A does not apply by virtue of subsection (3) of that section, the company has not deducted and paid the amount, but
(c) the company has not been provided by any other person with evidence from which it would be reasonable in all the circumstances to conclude that subsection (3) of that section applied (and the mere assertion by a person that the manner in which the worker provided the services was not subject to (or to the right of) supervision, direction or control by any person is not such evidence).
(4) An amount within this subsection is an amount that the company is to deduct and pay in accordance with PAYE regulations by virtue of section 339A in a case where subsection (4) of that section applies, (services provided under arrangements made by intermediaries).
(5) An amount within this subsection is any interest or penalty in respect of an amount within any of subsections (2) to (4) for which the company is liable.
(6) In this section—
“company” includes a limited liability partnership;
“director” has the meaning given by section 67;
“employment intermediary” has the same meaning as in section 339A;
“officer”, in relation to a company, means any manager, secretary or other similar officer of the company, or any person acting or purporting to act as such.”
(4) In Part 4 of the Income Tax (Pay As You Earn) Regulations 2003 (S.I. 2003/2682) (payments, returns and information), after Chapter 3A insert—
“Chapter 3B
Certain debts of companies under section 339a of ITEPA (travel expenses of workers providing services through employment intermediaries)
97ZG Interpretation of Chapter 3B: “relevant PAYE debt” and “relevant date”
(1) In this Chapter “relevant PAYE debt”, in relation to a company means an amount within any of paragraphs (2) to (5).
(2) An amount within this paragraph is an amount that the company is to account for in accordance with these Regulations by virtue of section 339A(7) to (9) of ITEPA (persons providing fraudulent documents).
(3) An amount within this paragraph is an amount which a company is to deduct and pay in accordance with these Regulations by virtue of section 339A of ITEPA in circumstances where—
(a) the company is an employment intermediary,
(b) on the basis that section 339A of ITEPA does not apply by virtue of subsection (3) of that section the company has not deducted and paid the amount, but
(c) the company has not been provided by any other person with evidence from which it would be reasonable in all the circumstances to conclude that subsection (3) of that section applied (and the mere assertion by a person that the manner in which the worker provided the services was not subject to (or to the right of) supervision, direction or control by any person is not such evidence).
(4) An amount within this paragraph is an amount that the company is to deduct and pay in accordance with these Regulations by virtue of section 339A of ITEPA in a case where subsection (4) of that section applies (services provided under arrangements made by intermediaries).
(5) An amount within this paragraph is any interest or penalty in respect of an amount within any of paragraphs (2) to (4) for which the company is liable.
(6) In this Chapter “the relevant date” in relation to a relevant PAYE debt means the date on which the first payment is due on which PAYE is not accounted for.
97ZH Interpretation of Chapter 3B: general
In this Chapter—
“company” includes a limited liability partnership;
“director” has the meaning given by section 67 of ITEPA; “personal liability notice” has the meaning given by regulation 97ZI(2);
“the specified amount” has the meaning given by regulation 97ZI(2)(a).
97ZI Liability of directors for relevant PAYE debts
(1) This regulation applies in relation to an amount of relevant PAYE debt of a company if the company does not deduct that amount by the time by which the company is required to do so.
(2) HMRC may serve a notice (a “personal liability notice”) on any person who was, on the relevant date, a director of the company—
(a) specifying the amount of relevant PAYE debt in relation to which this regulation applies (“the specified amount”), and
(b) requiring the director to pay to HMRC—
(i) the specified amount, and
(ii) specified interest on that amount.
(3) The interest specified in the personal liability notice—
(a) is to be at the rate applicable under section 178 of the Finance Act 1989 for the purposes of section 86 of TMA, and
(b) is to run from the date the notice is served.
(4) A director who is served with a personal liability notice is liable to pay to HMRC the specified amount and the interest specified in the notice within 30 days beginning with the day the notice is served.
(5) If HMRC serve personal liability notices on more than one director of the company in respect of the same amount of relevant PAYE debt, the directors are jointly and severally liable to pay to HMRC the specified amount and the interest specified in the notices.
97ZJ Appeals in relation to personal liability notices
(1) A person who is served with a personal liability notice in relation to an amount of relevant PAYE debt of a company may appeal against the notice.
(2) A notice of appeal must—
(a) be given to HMRC within 30 days beginning with the day the personal liability notice is served, and
(b) specify the grounds of the appeal.
(3) The grounds of appeal are—
(a) that all or part of the specified amount does not represent an amount of relevant PAYE debt, of the company, to which regulation 97ZI applies, or
(b) that the person was not a director of the company on the relevant date.
(4) But a person may not appeal on the ground mentioned in paragraph (3)(a) if it has already been determined, on an appeal by the company, that—
(a) the specified amount is a relevant PAYE debt of the company, and
(b) the company did not deduct, account for, or (as the case may be) pay the debt by the time by which the company was required to do so.
(5) Subject to paragraph (6), on an appeal that is notified to the tribunal, the tribunal is to uphold or quash the personal liability notice.
(6) In a case in which the ground of appeal mentioned in paragraph (3)(a) is raised, the tribunal may also reduce or increase the specified amount so that it does represent an amount of relevant PAYE debt, of the company, to which regulation 97ZI applies.
97ZK Withdrawal of personal liability notices
(1) A personal liability notice is withdrawn if the tribunal quashes it.
(2) An officer of Revenue and Customs may withdraw a personal liability notice if the officer considers it appropriate to do so.
(3) If a personal liability notice is withdrawn, HMRC must give notice of that fact to the person upon whom the notice was served.
97ZL Recovery of sums due under personal liability notice: application of Part 6 of TMA
(1) For the purposes of this Chapter, Part 6 of TMA (collection and recovery) applies as if—
(a) the personal liability notice were an assessment, and
(b) the specified amount, and any interest on that amount under regulation 97ZI(2)(b)(ii), were income tax charged on the director upon whom the notice is served,
and that Part of that Act applies with the modification in paragraph (2) and any other necessary modifications.
(2) Summary proceedings for the recovery of the specified amount, and any interest on that amount under regulation 97ZI(2)(b)(ii), may be brought in England and Wales or Northern Ireland at any time before the end of the period of 12 months beginning with the day after the day on which the personal liability notice is served.
97ZM Repayment of surplus amounts
(1) This regulation applies if—
(a) one or more personal liability notices are served in respect of an amount of relevant PAYE debt of a company, and
(b) the amounts paid to HMRC (whether by directors upon whom notices are served or the company) exceed the aggregate of the specified amount and any interest on it under regulation 97ZI(2)(b)(ii).
(2) HMRC is to repay the difference on a just and equitable basis and without unreasonable delay.
(3) HMRC is to pay interest on any sum repaid.
(4) The interest—
(a) is to be at the rate applicable under section 178 of the Finance Act 1989 for the purposes of section 824 of ICTA, and
(b) is to run from the date the amounts paid to HMRC come to exceed the aggregate mentioned in subsection (l)(b).”
(5) The amendment made by paragraph (4) is to be treated as having been made by the Commissioners for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in exercise of the power conferred by section 688B of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 (inserted by paragraph (3)).
(6) The amendment made by paragraph (1) has effect in relation to the tax year 2016-17 and subsequent tax years.
(7) The amendment made by paragraph (4) has effect in relation to relevant PAYE debts that are to be deducted, accounted for or paid on or after 6 April 2016.
And it is declared that it is expedient in the public interest that this Resolution should have statutory effect under the provisions of the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1968.
Relevant consideration | Percentage |
So much as does not exceed £150,000 So much as exceeds £150,000 but does not exceed £250,000 The remainder (if any) | 0% 2% 5%” |
“Over £150,000 but not over £5 million Over £5 million | 1% 2% |
Relevant consideration | Percentage |
So much as does not exceed £125,000 So much as exceeds £125,000 but does not exceed £250,000 So much as exceeds £250,000 but does not exceed £925,000 So much as exceeds £925,000 but does not exceed £1,500,000 The remainder (if any) | 3% 5% 8% 13% 15% |
“144A (regulated home reversion plans) | 5A” |
56. INSURANCE PREMIUM TAX (STANDARD RATE)
19:24 - The House divided: - Ayes: 307 / Noes: 62 - Question accordingly agreed to.
19:38 - The House divided: - Ayes: 297 / Noes: 62 - Question accordingly agreed to.
CO2 emissions figure | Rate | ||
(1) | (2) | (3) | (4) |
Exceeding | Not Exceeding | Reduced Rate | Standard Rate |
g/km | g/km | £ | £ |
130 | 140 | 120 | 130 |
140 | 150 | 135 | 145 |
150 | 165 | 175 | 185 |
165 | 175 | 290 | 300 |
175 | 185 | 345 | 355 |
185 | 200 | 490 | 500 |
200 | 225 | 640 | 650 |
225 | 255 | 875 | 885 |
255 | — | 1110 | 1120 |
CO2 emissions figure | Rate | ||
(1) | (2) | (3) | (4) |
Exceeding | Not Exceeding | Reduced Rate | Standard Rate |
g/km | g/km | £ | £ |
100 | 110 | 10 | 20 |
110 | 120 | 20 | 30 |
120 | 130 | 100 | 110 |
130 | 140 | 120 | 130 |
140 | 150 | 135 | 145 |
150 | 165 | 175 | 185 |
165 | 175 | 200 | 210 |
175 | 185 | 220 | 230 |
185 | 200 | 260 | 270 |
200 | 225 | 285 | 295 |
225 | 255 | 490 | 500 |
255 | — | 505 | 515”; |
1. Cigarettes | An amount equal to 16.5 per cent of the retail price plus £196.42 per thousand cigarettes |
2. Cigars | £245.01 per kilogram |
3. Hand-rolling tobacco | £198.10 per kilogram |
4. Other smoking tobacco and chewing tobacco | £107.71 per kilogram”. |
Description of wine or made-wine | Rates of duty per hectolitre £ |
Wine or made-wine of a strength not exceeding 4% | £85.60. |
Wine or made-wine of a strength exceeding 4% but not exceeding 5.5% | £117.72 |
Wine or made-wine of a strength exceeding 5.5% but not exceeding 15% and not being sparkling | £277.84 |
Sparkling wine or sparkling made-wine of a strength exceeding 5.5% but less than 8.5% | £268.99 |
Sparkling wine or sparkling made-wine of a strength of at least 8.5% but not exceeding 15% | £355.87 |
Wine or made-wine of a strength exceeding 15% but not exceeding 22% | £370.41” |
Procedure (Orchestra Tax Credits)
Procedure (Social Security Contributions)
Procedure (Measures Relating to Large Businesses)
Procedure (Raw Tobacco Approval Scheme)
Procedure (Information Powers in Connection with Tax Advantages Constituting State Aid)
Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You, above all, will be aware that the power of this House historically derives from its right to levy taxation, a right in respect of value added tax that it handed over to others 40 years ago. Can you confirm that although the Government have not contested two amendments altering rates of VAT, those changes will be nugatory, despite having the unanimous support of this House, unless all 28 member states agree, as the Government hope they will, to accord to this House the rare privilege of being able to determine two rates of VAT on important, but tiny, items? Can you therefore advise whether the House should be enormously grateful for the possibility that we will regain this small power to affect some taxation? Or should we make it a rule of the House that should we ever want to exercise powers of taxation in future, we announce a referendum before each Finance Bill?
Mr Speaker
I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I know, or at least I feel confident, that he will not take it amiss if I suggest, on the basis both of the content of his point of order and of the manner of its delivery, that he was more interested in what he had to say to me than in anything that I might have to say to him. What I would say to the right hon. Gentleman, who is very deeply versed in these matters, is that I can comment on the matter of fact, which is that the House has agreed to the two amendments, a point not in dispute between or us or a matter of any doubt in the Chamber, but I do not feel able to comment upon effect—what it will or will not be. However, I have a sense that his point of order was something of a warm-up, and I have a feeling that to this matter he, and doubtless others, will soon, possibly at greater length, return—[Interruption.] Some mischievous soul says, “Hope not.” I think the hope is in vain.
Ordered,
That a Bill be brought in upon the foregoing Resolutions;
That the Chairman of Ways and Means, the Prime Minister, Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary Sajid Javid, Secretary Nicky Morgan, Secretary Greg Clark, Greg Hands, Damian Hinds, Harriet Baldwin and Mr David Gauke bring in the Bill.
Finance (No.2) Bill
Presentation and First Reading
Mr David Gauke accordingly presented a Bill to grant certain duties, to alter other duties, and to amend the law relating to the National Debt and the Public Revenue, and to make further provision in connection with finance.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 155) with explanatory notes (Bill 155-EN).
Business without Debate
Mr Speaker
With the leave of the House, we shall take motions 3 to 7 together.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),
Family Law
That the draft Child Support (Deduction of Orders and Fees) (Amendment and Modification) Regulations 2016, which were laid before this House on 8 February, be approved.
Pensions
That the draft Automatic Enrolment (Earnings Trigger and Qualifying Earnings Band) Order 2016, which was laid before this House on 1 February, be approved.
Companies
That the draft Companies (Address of Registered Office) Regulations 2016, which were laid before this House on 8 February, be approved.
That the draft Registrar of Companies and Applications for Striking Off (Amendment) Regulations 2016. which were laid before this House on 8 February, be approved.
Insolvency
That the draft Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 (Consequential Amendments) (Bankruptcy) and the Small Business. Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2016, which were laid before this House on 22 February, be approved.—(Julian Smith.)
Question agreed to.
Business of the House
Ordered,
That, at the sitting on Tuesday 12 April—
(1) notwithstanding sub-paragraph (2)(c), as applied by paragraph (4), of Standing Order No. 14 (Arrangement of public business), the backbench business set down for consideration may be entered upon at any hour, may be proceeded with, though opposed, for three hours, and shall then lapse if not previously disposed of; and
(2) notwithstanding the provisions of Standing Order No. 20 {Time for taking private business), the private business set down by the Chairman of Ways and Means may be entered upon at any hour (whether before, at or after 4.00pm) and may then be proceeded with, though opposed, for three hours, after which the Speaker shall interrupt the business.—(Julian Smith.)
high Speed Rail (london – west midlands) bill
Ordered,
That, at the sitting on Wednesday 23rd March, the following provisions shall apply to proceedings on the High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill:
1. (1) Proceedings on Consideration shall be taken in the order shown in the first column of the following Table.
(2) The proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the times specified in the second column of the Table.
Table
Proceedings | Time for conclusion of proceedings |
|---|---|
New clauses, new schedules and amendments relating to economic and financial issues including compensation and railway ownership | One hour after the commencement of proceedings on Consideration |
New clauses, new schedules and amendments relating to the route and environmental issues; remaining proceedings on Consideration | Two hours after the commencement of proceedings on Consideration |
(3) Proceedings on Third Reading and proceedings on the Motion in the name of Secretary Patrick McLoughlin relating to carry-over (No. 3) shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion three hours after the commencement of proceedings on Consideration.
2. (1) This paragraph applies for the purpose of bringing proceedings to a conclusion in accordance with paragraph 1.
(2) In relation to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading, the Speaker shall put the following Questions in the same order as they would fall to be put if this Order did not apply—
(a) any Question already proposed from the Chair;
(b) any Question necessary to bring to a decision a Question so proposed;
(c) any Question on any amendment, new clause or new schedule selected by the Speaker for separate decision;
(d) the Question on any amendment moved or Motion made by a Minister of the Crown;
(e) any other Question necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded.
(3) On a motion made for a new clause or a new schedule, the Speaker shall put only the Question that the clause or schedule be added to the Bill.
(4) In relation to proceedings on the Motion mentioned in paragraph 1(3), the Speaker shall put forthwith the Questions necessary to dispose of the proceedings.
3. Standing Order No. 15(1) (Exempted business) shall apply so far as necessary to proceedings to which this Order applies.
4. Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply in relation to proceedings on the Motion mentioned in paragraph 1(3).—(Julian Smith.)
Mr Speaker
Just before I call the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), I appeal to Members who are leaving the Chamber, perhaps unaccountably, to do so quickly and quietly so that the hon. Gentleman can make his case and be afforded a decent hearing.
Breast Ironing
(8 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
I will start with three letters: FGM. Thanks to the tireless campaigning of charities such as Daughters of Eve and Dahlia, we now know that those letters are an abbreviation for: the abhorrent practice of female genital mutilation. For any colleague who still struggles to understand FGM, I cannot put it in clearer or more stark terms than those used by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias) in her excellent contribution to the recent International Women’s Day debate:
“the equivalent of female genital mutilation in a man would be the removal of the head of the penis and of a third of the shaft.” —[Official Report, 8 March 2016; Vol. 607, c. 233.]
FGM was hidden from us for many years, and while this practice did not originate in Britain, we have come to know and tackle it here in the UK. FGM was first legislated on by the UK Government in 1985, at which point the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985 made the practice of FGM illegal. In 2003, it became an offence to take a girl abroad for the purpose of FGM. Finally, the Serious Crime Act 2015 took further measures to create a robust legal framework to deal with this abhorrent practice. Thanks to a 30-year journey of revealing and legislating on this barbaric practice, it is now widely recognised. I am ashamed to say, however, that in that 30-year journey, there has not been a single prosecution here in the UK.
It is against the perspective of this lengthy struggle that I wish to raise the issue of breast ironing. It is perhaps unsurprising that so few people have heard of it. Breast ironing—or breast flattening, as it is often referred to—is believed to have originated in Cameroon but is also found in Nigeria, the Republic of Guinea, South Africa, Chad, Togo, Benin, Birmingham and London. It is the practice of pounding the developing breasts of young girls with objects heated over coals or on a stove, and it tends to be performed on girls from about the age of 10 up until the end of puberty. Hot stones, hammers and spatulas are used twice a day for several weeks or months to stop or delay, and in some cases permanently destroy, the natural development of the breast.
Girls subjected to this abuse are told by the perpetrators that it is necessary to continue with this abhorrent practice until it no longer hurts. This gives us some idea of the unimaginable pain and suffering they are subjected to. Breast ironing exposes girls to numerous health issues, such as cancer, abscesses, itching, discharge of milk, infection and asymmetry of the breasts. Girls who undergo breast ironing can expect to experience an increased prevalence of breast cysts, breast infections, severe fever, tissue damage and even the complete disappearance of one or both breasts.
Mr Deputy Speaker, you are probably sitting there, like many other right hon. and hon. Members, thinking, “Why would anyone do this to a young woman or girl?” Breast flattening, or ironing, is carried out by the perpetrators in the belief that it makes girls less sexually attractive to men; in the certainty that mutilation of the breasts will protect young girls from sexual harassment, rape or early forced marriage; and with the confidence that the breasts of young girls can develop only if they think about sex, if a man touches their breasts, if a girl watches pornography or even if a girl visits a night club.
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
Is it not also the case that some parents believe they can prevent puberty from happening altogether by carrying out breast ironing?
Jake Berry
That is the point, but it is a mistaken belief, and one that has no place in any society, let alone ours here in Britain.
The words “culture”, “tradition” or “religion” come up when people try to explain this absurdly harmful practice, but as in the case of FGM, these words are just a thinly veiled excuse for a ritualised form of child abuse.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The hon. Gentleman brought this issue to the House on International Women’s Day. That evening I sponsored an event on domestic violence that was attended by more than 100 people. I had not heard about breast ironing until that day, but FGM and breast ironing, and their prevalence in our society, including here in London, were raised that night. Does he agree that we need zero tolerance when it comes to this practice?
Jake Berry
I will come to that. I hope that the Minister will say what steps we can take to send the message out loud and clear from this House of Commons that the practice is completely unacceptable, whether it happens in London, Birmingham or any other city, or whether young girls are being taken to Cameroon, Nigeria or elsewhere for it to be done over the school holidays. No one should think that they can get away with it in this country without fear of prosecution.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
I applaud what my hon. Friend says. I was responsible for bringing in the first ever anti-violence against women and girls strategy in London, which looked at some of these issues. The police did something like a cultural cringe when dealing with some of these problems until I highlighted to the commissioner the fact that if little boys were appearing across London on a systematic basis with their little finger missing, we would be doing something about it. I pointed out that because this involved girls, was possibly invisible and had this cultural overlay, the police felt that they should stand off from it. Pleasingly, that is no longer the case, but I hope that my hon. Friend agrees that we could do much more to make the unacceptability of these practices widespread.
Jake Berry
I agree absolutely. This idea that puberty, the natural development of a woman’s adult body and the natural journey to maturity can be violated as part of some mistaken or bizarre belief system has no place in our society.
As with FGM, the practice of breast ironing is hidden because it is most often carried out by a family member. A recent UN report revealed that 58% of the perpetrators of breast ironing are the girl’s own mother. Although awareness of FGM is probably at an all-time high, the practice of breast ironing will remain hidden unless we in this House speak out about it wherever we can. Breast ironing has been identified by the UN as one of the five most under-reported crimes relating to gender-based violence. That is why this debate is so important
I said that this practice of breast ironing has been found in Birmingham and London. However, because of the hidden nature of this abuse, it is hard to prove the extent of its prevalence in the UK. In the words of Margaret Nyuydzewira, founder of the UK-based pressure group, CAME:
“Breast ironing is a practice that happens in the privacy of women’s homes, it’s hard to see who is doing it, and people are not willing to talk about it. It’s like female genital mutilation: you know it’s happening but you are not going to see it”.
Despite the secrecy around breast ironing, the anti-FGM campaigner and co-founder of Daughters of Eve, Leyla Hussein, recently revealed she had met a woman in the UK who had undergone breast ironing. Recent press coverage has said that it is endemic and experts believe that the custom is being practised among the several thousand Cameroonians now living in the UK.
CAME has estimated that up to 1,000 girls in the UK have been subjected to breast ironing and that an unknown number have been subjected to it abroad. It highlighted to me one case reported to the police in Birmingham where no further action was taken, as it was put down to being part of someone’s culture rather than a crime.
Jake Berry
I am sorry, but I will not, because I must make some progress.
The Mayor of London’s harmful practices taskforce, on which my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) served, described breast ironing as an emerging issue here in the UK. It is precisely the lack of hard facts and figures that has led me to seek this debate on breast ironing and the Government’s response.
It has also led me to do something else. I wrote to every police force in the UK and every local authority in the UK to ask what they were doing about this issue. The police forces that wrote back to me showed real concern. They know that this is a worrying crime and they have a worrying lack of knowledge of it. Some 72% of the police forces that responded either failed to answer a question about breast ironing or admitted that they had never heard of it, while 38% said they wanted more guidance. This demonstrates a lack of understanding among our police forces about breast ironing and the signs that reveal that it is happening. Although some police forces, including West Mercia, Merseyside, Thames Valley and Hertfordshire, are taking encouraging steps to raise awareness, I hope that the Minister will consider issuing guidance from the Department to ensure that this best practice is spread and that those who do not have the information on breast ironing can be enlightened.
I also wrote to representatives of all the local authority children’s services departments. Of those who responded, 23% volunteered the information that they had never undertaken any training in this area, and 65% said that they would like more guidance. Departments in Greater Manchester, Leicester and the City of London are already taking action, but, like the police forces, all the children’s departments in our local authorities want more information. On their own admission, the police and local authorities need further training in dealing with this practice and bringing criminals to prosecution. If we fail to give them the tools that they require to identify and understand the victims of this crime, they will never be able to tackle it.
I understand that there is currently no stand-alone crime of breast ironing in the United Kingdom, and that police and prosecutors have to rely on the existing pool of criminal offences that are available to them. I believe that, as with female genital mutilation, that is not an adequate protection for young women and girls in our country. I pay tribute to the Minister for her work on the Bill that became the Serious Crime Act 2015, which, among other things, provided anonymity for victims of FGM, created a new civil protection order, created a new offence of failing to protect a girl from FGM, provided for statutory guidance, and imposed a duty to report on public sector professionals such as teachers, social workers and doctors. I believe that all those protections should be considered in relation to the crime of breast ironing. I hope that the Minister will consider the creation of a stand-alone offence, and will also extend the protections in the 2015 Act to breast ironing.
As I hope I have demonstrated, this crime is not given the recognition that it needs to be given in our communities here in the United Kingdom. One of the main barriers that I have been able to cite this evening is a lack of awareness among all Government agencies, including police, local authorities and schools. The very people who should be keeping these girls safe do not know what to look for, and, more important, do not know where to look. I ask the Minister to undertake to ensure that the Department gives guidance to those Government agencies on how to spot the girls who are at risk. I also ask her to request the Department to make a thorough study of the prevalence of breast ironing in the UK. If we are to tackle this crime, we must find out where it is taking place and how many people are victims of it.
Yesterday, a colleague asked me why I, as a man, had chosen to speak about breast ironing. The answer is simple. If we in the House of Commons fail to act, if we fail to speak out about this horrendous and abhorrent crime, it is we who are letting young girls and women down here in our country. Unless we speak out and raise the profile of breast ironing, the hidden suffering of young teenage girls will always remain hidden.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Karen Bradley)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) on securing a debate about an important issue on which he has previously been campaigning. He should be assured that the fact that the subject is on the Order Paper has really made people sit up and listen today. I had to explain to a number of colleagues what this evening’s Adjournment debate was about, and the utter horror on each and every face when they understood is testimony to the importance of the debate and the fact that my hon. Friend has secured it.
One of my hon. Friend’s final points related to men raising these matters. These are not just women’s issues. This is violence against women and girls—some of it is perpetrated by men and some by women—but we need men to speak out and make it clear that these practices are unacceptable. The excuse given for FGM, breast ironing and other so-called honour-based violence is that men require it, and that it has to happen to women so that men will accept them. That is simply not true, and men need to speak out and make it clear that that is not the case. I congratulate my hon. Friend and the other men who have spoken in the debate, as well as the women who have contributed. It is important that we all speak on this matter.
I want to make it absolutely clear that breast ironing is not just an abhorrent practice; it is illegal. It is child abuse, and no political or cultural sensitivities should ever be used as an excuse for us to stop tackling it. As my hon. Friend has noted, there are parallels between breast ironing and other harmful practices such as FGM. One such parallel is the fact that these practices are often hidden crimes, which makes it difficult for us to estimate their prevalence. We want to find the victims of these crimes and we want to stop the crimes happening, but we will be able to do that only if people and communities are brave enough to speak out and say that the practice is unacceptable. It is also the responsibility of the police proactively to look for these crimes and to devise and implement measures to increase the confidence of victims to report them and to give evidence.
Dr Whitford
As this practice is predominantly carried out during puberty when the girls are at school, should we not be educating them about it within the school system in the United Kingdom? Would that not encourage them to come forward?
Karen Bradley
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I work closely with Ministers in the Department for Education to ensure that guidance material is available to enable schools to teach people about this. I will say more about that shortly. However, I know that certain professionals might feel reticent about the subject. They might feel that cultural sensitivities are involved or that there are political reasons why they should not go there. That is simply not the case, however, and we need to give those professionals the confidence to know that this is something they should be looking for, to know what the signs are and to take action. That is what we all need to do.
Kit Malthouse
I completely agree with the Minister. I wonder whether her Department, or indeed the police, might look at the French experience, which has involved a significant number of prosecutions and convictions, particularly for FGM but also for other harmful cultural practices. My hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) made the point that one of the difficulties that the police sometimes face from a cultural point of view is that the perpetrator is often a family member. So we may well be prosecuting granny and putting her in prison, but even that is no excuse, and we need to lock some of these people up, if only to send a signal.
Karen Bradley
Let me address the point about convictions. My hon. Friend makes the point that France and other countries have had successful prosecutions resulting in convictions, but we have to accept that there are different legal systems involved. It is also worth making the point that although FGM was first made a crime in 1985, the Crown Prosecution Service did not receive a single referral of a case that it might have been able to take to prosecution before 2010. That is why the organisations and community groups that work on this are very important, and we have to work with them at a community level. What my hon. Friend says is true: victims of FGM might have to give evidence in court against a family member.
We are sometimes asked why we cannot just go ahead and get a conviction, if we know that a crime has happened. Well, there are plenty of unsolved murders. There might be a body, and we might know that someone has been murdered, but we cannot necessarily get the evidence we need. This is about equipping the police, law enforcement agencies and other professionals with the tools that they need to gather the necessary evidence, information and intelligence. Like my hon. Friend, I want to see a conviction for this. We have had a successful conviction for forced marriage, and I want to see a conviction for FGM, but we all have to acknowledge and respect the difficulties involved in getting such a conviction.
It is important to remember that a conviction is in many ways a failure—a crime has happened. The more that we can do to prevent the crime from happening in the first place and to make it clear that the practice is illegal and therefore should not happen, the better the result will be. Where this crime does occur, we want to ensure that the law enforcement response is as robust as possible.
I want to discuss with my hon. Friend his thoughts about legislation, but let me be clear that breast ironing is against the law today. Although there are no specific offences, the police have a range of other offences at their disposal to deal with any cases that they encounter, including common assault, actual bodily harm or grievous bodily harm, child cruelty and causing or allowing a child to suffer serious physical harm. The Crown Prosecution Service takes seriously the effective prosecution of all forms of honour-based violence. In 2014-15, 225 defendants were prosecuted in cases flagged as having an honour-based violence component, a rise from 206 in the previous year, with 129 convictions—the highest ever recorded. However, it is true that we want more convictions. This debate can send a message to law enforcement and the CPS that we want the offence to get more attention.
In December, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary published its review of the police response to honour-based violence. The review found some areas of good practice, but also raised serious concerns about the police’s handling of such issues. I stress again that honour-based violence is a crime. The so-called honour-based context—there is no honour in any of these crimes—does not prevent it from being a crime. HMIC’s report showed that the police were not bringing to bear some offences, such as domestic abuse or child abuse. We are working closely with HMIC, considering the report’s findings, and working with police forces, the national policing lead and the College of Policing to ensure that we get the right guidance. That means further work and training to help to increase the understanding of crimes such as breast ironing.
On mandatory reporting, my hon. Friend talked about the measures that we introduced in the Serious Crime Act 2015 regarding FGM, which we know are working. I had an email from my county council in Staffordshire only today saying that an FGM protection order had been put on a baby. It is absolutely fantastic that the orders are being used in practice and preventing this dreadful crime from taking place. We placed a mandatory reporting duty on professionals who are aware of FGM cases involving girls aged under 18. We are also committed to consulting on a mandatory reporting duty for all child abuse, and that consultation will start shortly. The consultation is broad and wide ranging. We are looking at various measures, including a mandatory duty to report all forms of child abuse. We will consider all responses, and I encourage anybody who is listening to this debate to make sure that they feed into that consultation.
Before I wrap up, let me mention the work that we are doing internationally. We know that cases of breast ironing have been documented in Cameroon and other parts of Africa. In Cameroon, the British High Commission has been working closely with the Minister of Women’s Empowerment and the Family in co-ordination with local religious leaders on campaigns to raise awareness and to support a community-led change to end breast ironing.
My hon. Friend will know that last year the Prime Minister appointed my noble friend Baroness Verma as ministerial champion for tackling violence against women and girls overseas. I work closely with her to ensure that we are doing all that we can not only in this country, but in countries where we know that there is a high prevalence, or a higher prevalence, of such practice. We need to tackle harmful practice overseas. I have met some fantastic charities that work with communities and stand up and say that this practice is wrong. They also try to get villages and tribes to say that it is wrong, because if they do that, the next village will follow. Fantastic work is being done.
There is always more that we can do. I am conscious of time, so I will finish by thanking my hon. Friend for securing this debate and commending the work that is being done by many organisations, particularly CAME women and Girls Development Organisation, to bring hidden practices, such as breast ironing, to the fore.
My hon. Friend has done a great service. He has raised awareness of this practice in a way that one is able to do in this Chamber. Sometimes we underestimate the power an Adjournment debate in this place to raise awareness of an issue. Let me reiterate that what we are talking about is illegal. It is a crime and it is not acceptable. I want to assure the House that the Government fully understand that and are absolutely committed to putting a stop to it.
Question put and agreed to.
Policing and Crime Bill (Fourth sitting)
(8 years, 9 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 6 / Noes: 8 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 6 / Noes: 8 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following:
Amendment 181, in schedule 1, page 122, line 10, at end insert—
“with the cost of obtaining such information to be met by the police and crime commissioner.”.
This amendment would require the police and crime commissioner to pay the costs the fire and rescue authority incurs in providing the police and crime commissioner with the information needed to prepare a proposal to transfer governance to the police and crime commissioner.
Amendment 172, in schedule 1, page 122, line 22, leave out sub-paragraph (a) and insert—
“(a) consult each relevant fire and rescue authority,
(ab) any local authority all or part of whose area forms part of the fire and rescue authority area, and
(ac) the relevant workforces.”.
This amendment will make it a statutory obligation for the local authority Fire and Rescue Authority, and relevant workforces, to be consulted before being taken over by a PCC.
Amendment 170, in schedule 1, page 122, line 25, leave out “make arrangements to seek the views of” and insert “consult comprehensively with”.
This amendment would require a police and crime commissioner to consult local residents about the proposal to transfer governance of the fire and rescue service to the police and crime commissioner.
Amendment 171, in schedule 1, page 122, line 26, leave out “commissioner’s police” and insert “fire and rescue authority”.
This amendment would mean that police and crime commissioners need only seek the views of people living in the affected fire and rescue authority rather than across the whole of the police force area.
Amendment 180, in schedule 1, page 122, line 43, after “proposal”, insert
“from an independent panel of experts chosen by the relevant police and crime commissioner and local authorities,”.
This amendment would guarantee the independence of panels tasked with assessing takeover proposals submitted by a PCC.
Amendment 173, in schedule 1, page 123, line 17, at end insert—
“(4) An order under section 4A, where modified or not by the Secretary of State, may only be made with the consent of the relevant local authority, relevant fire and rescue authority and relevant police and crime commissioner.”.
This amendment makes it a statutory requirement for the Secretary of State to get the consent of the PCC, Fire and Rescue Authority, and local authority, before making an order.
Amendment 177, in schedule 1, page 123, line 17, at end insert—
“(4) Before submitting a section 4A proposal to the Secretary of State, a relevant police and crime commissioner must make arrangements to hold a referendum.
(5) The persons entitled to vote in the referendum are those who, on the day of the referendum—
(a) would be entitled to vote as electors at an election for the relevant police and crime commissioner, and
(b) are registered in the register of local government electors at an address that is within a relevant fire authority area.
(6) The referendum is to be held on—
(a) a suitable date corresponding to the regular electoral cycle, or
(b) if there are no elections scheduled within the next 365 days, such other date as the Secretary of State may specify by order.
(7) The police and crime commissioner must inform the Secretary of State of the result of the referendum.
(8) The Secretary of State may only grant an order if—
(a) the proposal was approved by a majority of persons voting in the referendum, and
(b) the turnout for the referendum is greater than 25 per cent of those eligible to vote.
(9) A police and crime commissioner may not hold another referendum within the period of ten years.”.
This amendment would ensure that a PCC can only take over a Fire and Rescue Service with the approval of local people.
Amendment 178, in schedule 1, page 123, line 17, at end insert—
“(4) An order under section 4A, where modified or not by the Secretary of State, may only be made with either: consent of the relevant local authority and relevant fire and rescue authority, or a majority vote by local people through referendum.”.
This amendment would ensure that a PCC can only take over a Fire and Rescue Service with the approval of local people or their local representatives.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I hope we all had a jolly good lunch—well, perhaps not too good a lunch.
Amendment 181 solves two problems: it clears up the ambiguity around who will pay for the costs incurred in putting together proposals, and it helps to mitigate the potential for hostile takeovers by the police and crime commissioner where the fire and rescue authorities do not want to be taken over but are bullied into submission by spiralling costs. If the Minister wants to ensure that PCC takeovers are in the best interests of the fire and rescue service and improving public services, I am sure he will be in full and happy accord with the amendment.
Amendments 170, 171 and 172 deal with the consultation process: amendment 170 states that it must be a full consultation; amendment 171 restricts the scope of the consultation to local residents who are served by the fire and rescue authority; and amendment 172 makes workers and fire and rescue authorities statutory consultees. They would ensure that the consultation process is comprehensive and does not ignore the views of local people, professionals working in the emergency services or the current fire and rescue authority.
The consultation exercise that preceded the Bill was a bit of a sham. It was packed full of leading questions and did not show any real interest in the views of experts and specialists on the substance of the proposals. It was a bit of an insult, if I may say so, to their intelligence. I can see some scepticism on Government Members’ faces, so I will take them through this. Question 1 of the consultation, on the duty to collaborate, was:
“How do you think this new duty would help drive collaboration between the emergency services?”
The question assumes that the duty to collaborate will have that effect. The wording is, “How do you think the duty would help drive collaboration?” rather than, “Do you think a duty is necessary to drive collaboration?”
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
Is the hon. Lady sure that the question was not, “How do you think the duty to collaborate will make a difference?”?
Lyn Brown
I am fairly certain that I read that right.
Question 2 is almost worse. The consultation exercise sets out a process by which a PCC could assume control of a fire and rescue service and then asks consultees what they think of that process. If we were really interested in people’s views, we would ask what they think of giving PCCs those powers in the first place, but this Government are not interested in the views of the people they consulted, so they did not ask that question. Unfortunately, we cannot legislate against inadequately drafted consultation questions; I tried, but the Clerk of the Committee—nice man though he is—ruled it out of scope, which is a great pity.
The Bill’s provisions for public and stakeholder consultation need to be tightened up considerably. As the Bill is worded, the consultation process could be weak and almost non-existent, and it does not require PCCs to discuss their proposals and seek the assent of all relevant stakeholders. The provisions for consultation are contained within paragraph 3 of proposed new schedule A1 to the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004. Members will note that as it is worded, the Bill only requires the Secretary of State to
“make arrangements to seek the views”
of local people. That could mean something as little as an advert in a local newspaper with a dwindling circulation, a single public meeting or a notice on the Home Office website with an email address for responses. I fear that the clause is totally inadequate. It falls short of the language I would expect from legislation that intends the Home Secretary to engage in a full consultation with the widest community and to give local people the time, space and opportunity to have their views taken seriously. If the Minister would graciously accept amendment 170, we could get closer to having a decent, meaningful and comprehensive consultation process.
Amendment 171 seeks to ensure that all local people are consulted. At the moment, the Home Secretary has to seek the views of people in the police and crime commissioner’s consistency. We think that it is appropriate that she consult those who live in the area covered by the fire and rescue authority that is to be taken over. For example, Thames Valley contains three fire and rescue authorities. If the PCC proposed to take on the responsibility of only one of them, it should be the residents of that authority’s area, not the whole Thames Valley policing area, who are consulted. We need to seek the views of the people who will be affected. Their views should carry the most weight. These reforms are about the future governance of the fire and rescue service, so the people whose fire and rescue service is changing should have a say. What is the Minister’s justification for choosing the entire policing area as the relevant constituency?
Amendment 172 deals with statutory consultees. At the moment, the Bill makes local people and the relevant local authority a statutory consultee. We are of the view that that is inadequate. Any consultation must include the fire and rescue authority that is to be taken over, as its staff are presently charged with guaranteeing fire safety and resilience in the local area. If the Minister stands up and says, “Of course the local fire and rescue authority will be consulted,” I will accept that he imagines that to be the case. However, if he thinks that they will always be consulted, there is no harm in accepting our amendment and adding fire and rescue authorities to the list of statutory consultees. We will, however, safeguard against the unhappy event of a PCC taking over a fire and rescue service without its governors having a say. That would be the most hostile of hostile takeovers.
We are of the opinion that the relevant workforces ought to be statutory consultees. Why would they be left out? If the proposals are in the best interest of the fire and rescue services, the workforces will support them. I do not have to tell the Minister that they are the most dedicated and brave of our public servants, and they deserve a voice. The people working in our emergency services know the challenges that their services face better than anyone. Anyone with the future of the emergency services at heart should want to hear what they have to say. For that reason, I urge the Minister to accept the amendment. It is really not much to ask. I am sure he agrees with me on this.
If the Minister’s proposed reforms are to work, he needs local people and staff to buy into any change of governance. Those people have the right to be assured that the changes are positive and in the best interests of the service and public safety. If the PCC is unable to persuade those stakeholders, it would be best if the merger simply did not go ahead. I urge the Minister to accept amendments 170, 171 and 172 to ensure that local people and stakeholders are properly consulted and to avoid the sense that these reforms are being imposed from the centre against the wishes of local people, professionals and our emergency services, and against the interests of the fire service and public safety. A top-down reorganisation without the agreement of local people and the workforce is the last thing that our fire services need.
Amendment 180 would ensure that the panel that the Home Secretary uses to guide her through a business case is genuinely independent. The amendment would ensure that the review of the business case for a PCC takeover is independent of the Secretary of State. It states that the panel must not be Government appointees. It would instead empower PCCs and local authorities to select the panel. It has been tabled with the support of the Local Government Association.
As worded, the Bill states that where the PCC has put together a proposal to take on the governance of the fire and rescue service, it has to consult with the upper-tier authorities in its area before submitting it. Where one or more of the upper-tier councils does not support the proposals, the Secretary of State has to seek an independent assessment of the PCC’s proposals.
Paragraph 339 of the explanatory notes states:
“Such an independent assessment may be secured from HMIC, the Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser or any other such independent person as the Secretary of State deems appropriate”.
The chief fire and rescue adviser, although a very decent bloke, is directly employed by the Home Office. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary also receives its funding from the Home Office. There is therefore a question over how independent an assessment can be if it is carried out by Home Office employees on non-departmental public bodies funded by the Home Office.
Amendment 180 would mean that independent assessment is carried out by a panel of independent experts appointed at a local level rather than by central Government. The experts on the panel could include representatives from organisations such as the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, the Fire Service College, business schools and academic institutions, such as the London Business School or Cranfield University, the National Police Chiefs Council or companies with experience of advising and supporting the fire and rescue service and the police, such as Grant Thornton. There is a real danger that this is a recipe for a top-down reorganisation. It should not be left to the Secretary of State to appoint people to make the independent assessment. To avoid this danger, the Minister should accept Amendment 180.
Finally, Amendments 173, 177 and 178 deal with what consent requirements ought to be in place before a PCC can take over a fire and rescue service. We believe that this should not happen without the clear, unequivocal approval of local people, which is best measured by a vote or through the clear decision making of their locally elected representatives. Our amendments have been tabled to have that effect.
Amendment 173 would require the Home Secretary to gain the consent of the relevant fire and rescue authority and the relevant local authority before approving a takeover. As the Bill is currently drafted, a PCC can take over a fire and rescue service without the consent of the fire and rescue authority. We believe this is a recipe for hostile takeovers and should be avoided. Amendment 173 seeks to avoid conflict between arms of our emergency services, which could be both damaging and distracting for essential emergency services. It seeks to improve and make the process transparent by ensuring that the consent of a fire and rescue authority is a mandatory requirement of any PCC takeover.
Fire and rescue authorities are trusted experts on the fire service. Firefighters, fire officers and the public know that those who have served on the authorities have had the best interests of the fire service at heart. The councillors who serve on them have years of experience and a genuine deep knowledge and judgment gained by overseeing the strategic development of fire services in their local area. They know the integrated risk management programme intimately, and each lane and byway; the response time to all communities; and the extra value that firefighters bring to their communities through the additional work undertaken to care for the vulnerable or as a crime diversion. Surely there can be no doubt that they have done a good job and that their work has continued to provide safe communities, despite the swingeing cuts to service imposed over the past years.
The fire service has absorbed difficult financial reductions over the past years. Some 7,000 firefighters have been lost to the service over the previous Parliament as a result of a cumulative cash cut of £236 million. However, fire and rescue authorities have managed those reductions, hard as it has been, and have sought new ways to keep response times to a minimum and to focus, as much as humanly possible, on their governance work, playing an increased role in natural disaster relief and managing to remain one of the most trusted public services.
Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)
This morning, the hon. Lady mentioned Sir Ken Knight, who has referred to the patchiness of collaboration. Does she not recognise that the whole point of the Bill is to remove the patchiness and get people to work together?
Lyn Brown
I say gently to the hon. Lady that to get people to work together, we need to respect them, and each bit of the process needs to be treated equally. I also say gently to her that Sir Ken’s report was written three years ago and since then, the landscape has changed significantly.
Amanda Milling
In Staffordshire, we waited six months for the fire authority to engage in discussions. Those were six months during which collaborative work could have taken place. Does the hon. Lady recognise that the Bill will speed up the process and lead to more effective collaboration?
Lyn Brown
The hon. Lady obviously knows her own area better than I would ever presume to, but six months does not seem to be a horrendously long time to organise joint working if there are fundamental differences and it requires resources. I say to her again: one of the problems with the Government’s approach is that an hon. Member or one of the PCC’s staff can say, “I’ve been waiting six months for some collaboration to happen. It hasn’t happened, so I’m going to make sure the PCC takes over.” Decisions will be made in haste, with the sword of Damocles hanging over people’s necks.
Earlier in Committee, I mentioned just a few of the many collaborative projects that are happening among our emergency services. Each successful project depends on the emergency services trusting each other as equal partners in a common cause. If PCCs are encouraged to work against, rather than with, their local fire and rescue authority, there is a genuine danger that such projects will fall by the wayside. A Government who are interested in partnership should be going out of their way to reinforce partnerships. In my world at least, the partnerships I am involved in are based on equality, respect and trust.
In the world of public services, the equal importance of all our public services and the equal status of those tasked with running them should be upheld. That is what we should be doing, rather than creating hierarchies that rouse only distrust. It could be highly counter-productive to create uneven partnerships, with people looking over their shoulders and questioning their partners’ motivations.
Amanda Milling
Nobody would dispute that there are good examples of collaboration, but, as I say, it is patchy. Surely the Bill is about ensuring that there is good collaboration throughout the country. I am sure the hon. Lady will agree with me on that.
Jake Berry
In the first evidence session, many of the witnesses described collaboration as patchy. I asked whether the Bill would increase or reduce the amount of collaboration, and the witness said that it would increase it. Why does the hon. Lady disagree with the expert witness?
Lyn Brown
In my experience, collaboration often does not work when it is between forces of the same nature. There are often hard and fast boundaries between fire service areas and between police authority areas. I have, though, seen inter-service collaboration work really well. When the Committee asked the witnesses those questions, we did not specify the nature of the collaboration that the individual then described as patchy. There is some patchiness in collaboration between police forces and between fire authorities, but the best collaboration I have seen has been between the emergency services.
My anxiety about the decision in the Bill to give PCCs the right to take over fire and rescue services is that we will create unequal partners. In a world of unequal partners, decisions might get made for the wrong reasons. That is what I am trying to prevent. If the partners in an area that are talking about whether they can merge back offices, share a physical space or have the same telephone infrastructure are in a position of equality and agreement, it is of much greater benefit to the local area than if they are not.
Jake Berry
The hon. Lady is giving an excellent speech, but perhaps I may press her once more. The Opposition have said that the real difference is that, because of the nature of the services they provide, fire services are much smaller than police forces. Is she not therefore making the point that there could never be any collaboration between the fire service and the police force because the fire service, in and of itself, is smaller? If so, I profoundly disagree, because I think there is a real opportunity to collaborate, despite the disparity in sizes.
Lyn Brown
No. The disparity that I am talking about is not one of sizes, budgets or the nature of the services; it is a disparity in power. If one service has the right to take over another service, there is a disparity within the power relationship. The size does not matter. If we were saying that fire authorities had the right to take over police authorities, there would be a disparity in power, not in budgets or legal powers.
Our amendments are not only about involving local fire and rescue authorities; we think it is vital that any changes to the way in which our essential emergency services are governed have the support of the public. Amendment 173 would require such support to be gained through the approval of local representatives on the local authority. Amendment 177 would require that, should that approval not be obtained, consent must be gained through a referendum of local people.
I know that the Government have a strange relationship with referendums. At one moment, they seem to support referendums and think we should become a Switzerland of the north, deciding issues by plebiscite—with, for example, referendums on council tax rises—and not trusting the usual way of the ballot box, apparently on the grounds of localism. However, the Government seemed to fall out of love with the Swiss way in 2012 when they asked our 11 largest cities by referendum whether they wanted directly elected mayors, and all but one said no. The Chancellor, in his little way, decided to ignore that clear lack of mandate and is absolutely insistent about getting the mayors he wants in our major cities, in exchange for the delegation of powers. The Government seem to like referendums, as long as they get the results they want.
I raise the issue of referendums because the Government seek to argue that the reforms in the Bill are locally led. In the past, when they have worn a localist hat—not that it fitted them very well—the Government have indicated that it is for local people to make decisions on major local governance issues via referendums, and that major governance decisions should not be made by a Whitehall figure such as the Home Secretary. The decision on mayors and on fire and rescue governance is fundamentally about the transfer of power from the collective representation of local authorities to a single individual. Indeed, many of the Minister’s colleagues have said that they favour the reforms partly because they put power in the hands of a single person.
Amanda Milling
The hon. Lady has talked about a takeover a number of times. We are talking about a single individual who has direct electoral accountability to the public. If we had fire commissioners and were talking about the police coming under their remit, would she be pushing back on such a reform?
Lyn Brown
It has been known. I would object to such a reform, for all the same reasons.
The proposals are effectively about creating mini mayors. If this Government limp on after the European referendum, my guess is that we shall see other powers—probation, schools and who knows what else?—passed over to the PCCs. The Minister knows in his heart—I know he has a heart, although I am giving him a hard time today, for which I am sorry—that the reforms are about bolstering PCCs to the point where they become mini mayors. I do not think that he will say so, because he knows that there is no democratic mandate for it. There isn’t one—not at all.
Lyn Brown
Sorry. I will read from the manifesto and the Committee can tell me whether it states clearly that there is a plan to put fire and rescue services under PCC control:
“We will enable fire and police services to work more closely together and develop the role of our elected and accountable Police and Crime Commissioners.”
Honestly, that really does not say—
Jake Berry
On the hon. Lady’s emphasis, as I mentioned in connection with the questions in the consultation, there is clearly no comma or pause in that sentence—it has an “and” in it. The statements are clearly linked, so there is a clear statement in our manifesto that this is our intention. I am proud to be part of a majority Government delivering a Conservative manifesto.
Lyn Brown
For the time being. I did not see that when I read the Conservative manifesto last year. When I was walking around the country talking to firefighters and trying to persuade them to vote Labour, if I had realised what the Government intended to do from reading that sentence, I am sure I would have persuaded an awful lot more of them to vote red, rather than blue.
For the benefit of openness and transparency, and so that we may underpin governance with democracy, I urge the Government to accept amendment 178. What kind of localism agenda do the Government have if they are willing to force through a takeover when they have the support of neither local representatives nor the relevant electorate? This proposal was not clearly stated in the Government party’s manifesto. If the Minister rejects the amendment, his and the Home Secretary’s centralist and non-democratic agenda will be clear for all to see.
I hope that the Committee can see that the Bill is a recipe for the hostile takeover of fire and rescue authorities. Experience has shown that reorganisation without local consent and approval can lead to chaos, low morale, disorganisation and dysfunction—we only have to look at what happened in the health service. As the health service has also shown, reorganisation can waste an awful lot of money. The Minister does not want to be responsible for a top-down reorganisation as dysfunctional and anarchic as Lansley’s reforms of the NHS. He should take the opportunity to accept amendment 173. Our fire and rescue authorities need a say.
If the Minister truly believes in localism, he should also accept either amendment 177 or amendment 178. The Government have persistently argued that these reforms are part of a localism agenda, but they empower the Home Secretary to overrule the wishes of local people and their representatives. That simply cannot be right and it is not localism.
The Minister for Policing, Fire, Criminal Justice and Victims (Mike Penning)
From a sedentary position I accused the shadow Minister of reading a speech written by the Fire Brigades Union. It clearly was not written by the FBU because there were some really big words in there. However, some of the language in there was quite similar to what I have heard from the FBU. That was not personal and we beg to differ.
Mike Penning
I apologise to the Committee but I intend to speak at length on this part of the Bill, because the previous debate on clause 6 stand part was to introduce schedule 1. I had always intended to do that because I knew the shadow Minister had extensive comments.
I will not get into top-down discussions about what happened in other Departments. I remind the shadow Minister of what happened with fire control centres being regionalised. That was probably the biggest disaster and waste of money that the fire service has seen in our lifetimes. I am still dealing with the leases and trying to get rid of them. The fire Minister at the time, a good friend of mine, was highly embarrassed about that. He was moved on to other things, wrongly in my view because he was a damn good fire Minister who stood up for what he did.
At the end of the day, the decisions on whether PCCs should take control of fire authorities will be part of a negotiation package. Let me explain what the Bill says. A PCC would need to make a local case and canvass the views of local people, including the fire authorities. If, and only if, an agreement cannot be made, then he can ask the Home Secretary to have a look at it, who then would have an independent view. Anyone who knows Tom Winsor—the shadow Minister does—will know that Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary is mightily independent of the Home Office. It would be interesting for him to read that he is just a civil servant or Home Office apparatchik. He is very independent, so it does not need to be that way.
We are trying to look at this. Where collaboration has worked and where services want to come together, that is fine; and where collaboration has taken place and they do not want to come together, and nor does the PCC in that area, that is fine. Perhaps the fire authorities might want to look carefully at what is happening with the mayoral system. The shadow Minister freely admits that it has not worked in London. There will be a duly elected mayor who will be running the fire and police administratively, not operationally.
I listened carefully to what the shadow Minister had to say about councillors who have sat on committees for years. They are not elected to that role.
James Cleverly
Does the Minister recognise that if someone lives in a ward where the councillor does not sit on the local fire authority, there is nothing the elector can do to reward or punish the decisions of that fire authority? If that fire authority came under the remit of the local police and crime commissioner, every single voter in that area would have an opportunity to reward or punish at the ballot box? Does that not go to the heart of what local democratic accountability means?
Mike Penning
It does and it allows people who do not live in London or one of the larger metropolitan areas with a mayor to have that elected person responsible. It might be difficult for councillors who have been sitting on committees for years to turn around and impartially say, “Hey, we have been doing it this way for years. There may be a better way to do this.” I fully understand why some of the councillors who have spoken to me do not want change. That is the same argument we had when police authorities were removed and the PCCs came in. The PCCs are an unmitigated success—they must be, because Her Majesty’s Opposition are supporting them. Therefore, given that the Government had a manifesto commitment to push forward with giving them this role—it is there in black and white—why would we not do so?
To mitigate the concern raised several times by the shadow Minister that money that comes from the fire precept could be offset and used for police, those are two separate funding streams that cannot—
Mike Penning
No, not currently, because under the legislation they cannot be used across. Of course, common sense could be used. For instance, if a new police station is being built, we could bring joint funding together for that, but the accounting officer would have to agree to that.
Why do we need to do that? In my visits around the country I have been shown brand spanking new police stations—lovely! When we asked whether there was a consultation with fire to see whether they could be in there, we were told, “Well, we did think about it, but actually we needed it quite quickly and we needed it here.” The real difficulty is that we cannot put a fire station into a police station—those big, red engines do not fit in so well—but we can do it the other way around. We have seen that, and it has operated well. The rationale behind what we are trying to do is that when common sense cannot be agreed on, there must be a mechanism. The cost of a referendum would be astronomical and disproportionate. I did not hear of referendums when the fire control centres were regionalised either, but that was an unmitigated disaster.
I will touch on a couple of other points. The PCCs categorically have to make sure that they consult, because otherwise they will put their business case to the Home Secretary and when the independent review is provided their case will be rejected. The Bill confers a duty on PCCs to
“consult each relevant authority about the proposal”.
That ensures that consultation requirements capture all local authorities that operate fire and rescue committees or nominate members to a combined or metropolitan authority. That is in the Bill—it is physically there.
The other thing that I thought was somewhat concerning in one of the amendments was the concept that we would have to combine a referendum with when a local election takes place. In my part of the world in Hertfordshire, if that was talked about just after county elections it would be four years before we would have the next all-up county elections, and I do not think that would be acceptable.
The Bill’s concept is to try to ensure that taxpayers’ money is spent more efficiently and to keep separate emergency services. The hon. Member for North Durham touched on where ambulance services were and, interestingly enough, plans are already coming forward to some PCCs for triage ambulances to be brought in by local health service commissioners. That will evolve, but we are trying to have two blue lights working closely and the ambulance service working in two-tier collaboration. With all due respect to the shadow Minister, I think all the amendments are a delaying tactic for people who do not want that. If we are really honest about it, that is what they are about.
I respect that the Labour party does not want PCCs to run fire authorities, but I humbly disagree. I want duly elected people accountable to the public running the fire and rescue service where agreements can be made, based on existing fire authorities. That is crucial. There are other areas where there will be difficulties, but why should it be different for someone who lives in a metropolitan area from someone who lives in Hertfordshire? That is fundamentally wrong, so I ask the Committee to reject the amendments, which in my opinion are a delaying tactic.
The Chair
When the hon. Lady responds, will she give some indication of which amendments—if any—she wishes to proceed with?
Lyn Brown
We would like to press amendment 178 to a vote. We do not believe that it was very clearly in the Government’s manifesto that they wanted to place fire services under PCCs. When the Minister spoke today, he reiterated what worries me. He said things like, “If the fire service does not agree, it can go to the Home Secretary”. No, it should go to the people. The people should decide whether they want their PCC to be in charge of the fire and rescue authority. It was not in the manifesto—if it had been, I would feel much better about this. I read out the manifesto, and it takes a cryptologist to understand what it means. I will not take up any more time, other than to say that I would like to press Amendment 178 to a vote. This side of the Committee believes in localism and democracy. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lyn Brown
I beg to move amendment 179, in schedule 1, page 113, line 16, at end insert—
“(7) Where an order under this section is made, the Secretary of State must make provisions for the establishment of a local fire and emergency committee within three months of the order.
(8) A local fire and emergency committee shall be comprised of a balance of members from the local authorities of the relevant policing area and independent experts.
(9) The local fire and emergency committee must—
(a) keep under review the exercise of functions of the police and crime commissioner,
(b) submit proposals to the police and crime commissioner,
(c) review any draft documentation produced by the police and crime commissioner.
(10) The local fire and emergency committee may require a police and crime commissioner, and chief fire officer, to attend local fire and emergency committee proceedings and to produce to the committee documents under the police and crime commissioner’s control or possession.
(11) The local fire and emergency committee may veto the appointment of a chief fire officer.”.
This amendment would place PCCs who assume control of a FRS within a framework of scrutiny which is similar to that proposed for the London Mayor.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 13—Inspectors of Fire and Rescue Authorities—
“(1) The Secretary of State must appoint—
(a) a chief Inspector of Fire and Rescue Authorities; and
(b) such number of inspectors of fire and rescue authorities as the Secretary of State may determine.
(2) The Secretary of State shall determine and pay to the persons appointed under this section such remuneration.
(3) The Secretary of State must instruct the Chief Inspector of the Fire and Rescue Authorities to—
(a) inquire into a matter mentioned in subsection (4); and
(b) to submit to them a written report on that matter by a date specified by them.
(4) The matters under subsection (3)(a) are—
(a) the state and efficiency of relevant authorities generally;
(b) the manner in which—
(i) a relevant authority is carrying out any of its functions under this Act; or
(ii) relevant authorities are carrying out such functions generally;
(c) technical matters relating to a function of a relevant authority under this Act.
(5) The Secretary of State shall lay a copy of each report submitted under subsection (3)(b) before Parliament.”
This new clause would require the Home Secretary to establish a national inspectorate for the fire and rescue service.
New clause 14—Amendment of the Fire and Rescue Act—
“Amend section 21 of the Fire and Rescue Act 2004 (Fire and Rescue National Framework), after subsection 2(a) insert—
“(b) must set out national standards for the discharge of fire and rescue authorities’ functions including, but not limited to—
(i) response times;
(ii) preparedness for major incidences;
(iii) quantity and quality of preventive work
(iv) firefighter fitness
(v) equipment and PPE, and
(vi) training””
This new clause would establish national standards for fire and rescue services.
Lyn Brown
I know, I have worked that out, but I was still sitting here thinking, “Why aren’t we voting?”
Amendment 179 would require the Home Secretary to set up proper scrutiny arrangements for those fire and rescue services taken over by PCCs. New clause 13 would require the Home Secretary to establish a national inspection regime for the fire and rescue service. Currently, the Bill provides for the police and crime commissioners to become fire and rescue authorities. We do not think the Government have made the case for this fundamental reform but, if it is to happen, there needs to be an overhaul of the scrutiny regime that they will face. There must be rigorous scrutiny of their performance to ensure proper accountability and effective public services. Amendment 179 would provide for that.
At present, a fire and rescue authority is made up of elected council members providing a diversity of opinion and internal parliamentary-style scrutiny. The make-up of the panel is politically balanced in relation to the relevant local council. Fire and rescue associations are made up of the councillors genuinely interested in improving the fire and rescue service and improving services for their community.
James Cleverly
The hon. Lady made a mistake in the list of functions when she said that the members of the fire authority were there to provide scrutiny. They are not scrutineers; they are the executive. They perform the executive function, not the scrutiny function. As I mentioned in my speech in the Chamber, this goes to the heart of a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of fire authorities. They are not scrutineers of the executive; they are the executive. Does the hon. Lady agree?
Lyn Brown
We have a diversity of authorities in the country. When a fire and rescue authority is part of a council, the council provides the scrutiny of the fire and rescue function. There is an in-built scrutiny of the fire and rescue services by the local authorities. The Bill requires a PCC to provide police and crime panels with relevant information regarding their role as the fire and rescue authority. Police and crime panels are currently comprised of members understandably concerned primarily with matters of policing, so the new role will present a considerable extension of the role of the police and crime panel.
The Home Office currently provides funding to cover the cost of operating police and crime panels under the new burdens principle. However, the Home Office is yet to confirm to panels whether the funding will be available from 2016-17. In addition, the Home Office funding currently amounts to only £53,000 per panel annually. The Home Office calculated the amount to be paid to panels on the basis that they would need to hold only four meetings a year to provide the PCC with the light-touch scrutiny that it was thought was needed. Panels have struggled to ensure that they provide appropriate scrutiny of the PCC and fulfil their statutory duty in just four meetings a year, and they will struggle even more if they are expected to scrutinise the PCC’s role as a fire and rescue authority as well.
How, then, do the Government expect police and crime panels to deal with that extra burden of responsibility? Will independent experts, with knowledge of fire and rescue services, be co-opted on to panels? Will the co-opted policing experts be expected to scrutinise the PCC’s job as the fire and rescue authority? If so, what training is in place to ensure that they develop the required expertise? I am concerned that this model of governance will not provide the level of scrutiny required. We will therefore have police and crime panels, which are already creaking under financial constraints, further lumbered with the requirement to scrutinise police and crime commissioners in their role as fire and rescue authorities—a subject outside their expertise. Is it any wonder that the fire and rescue service is concerned about becoming a Cinderella service?
In our amendments we are proposing to create a separate fire and emergency committee, to be set up with powers to properly scrutinise police and crime commissioners over their role as fire and rescue authorities. Given what the Government are proposing in London, it is clear that they should support my amendment, because it is all consistent. In the provisions for London, the Bill sets out a fire and emergency committee to scrutinise the fire commissioner, who is appointed by the Mayor. Why should the rest of the country expect less scrutiny? Our amendment would create analogous committees wherever a PCC takes over a fire and rescue service. That will ensure that the governors of all fire and rescue services get the necessary level of scrutiny. What is good enough for London is good enough for the rest of the country.
What would that look like, and what powers would they hold? We propose that when the Secretary of State makes an order for a PCC to take over the fire and rescue authority, she must make provisions to establish a local fire and emergency committee within three months of the order. The committee would be comprised of a balance of members from the local authorities in the relevant policing area. It will also be able to co-opt independent fire experts on to the committee. They would be responsible for keeping under review the exercise of functions of the PCC, submitting proposals to the PCC and reviewing any draft documentation produced by the PCC. In short, they would provide scrutiny of, and advice to, PCCs in relation to the performance of their fire responsibilities, and they would be a proper scrutiny body rooted in local democracy.
This amendment would also enable a local fire and emergency committee to require a PCC and chief fire officer to attend local fire and emergency committee proceedings and to produce to the committee documents under the PCC’s control or possession. They would have powers as well as responsibilities. The Government will note that the proposals for the role of the fire and emergency committee is concurrent with its role in London. If the Government support it in the capital, they really should support this amendment.
The amendment would create a separate fire and emergency committee to rigorously scrutinise the PCC on its fire responsibilities. It would remove budgetary pressures from the police and crime panels and ensure that experts in the field of fire are given a scrutiny role. Furthermore, it would bring scrutiny of PCCs outside London in line with that in the capital. If the Minister believes that a fire and emergency committee is required in London, I urge him to support this amendment.
New clause 13 would require the Home Secretary to establish a national inspection regime for the fire and rescue service. I tabled it to put on the record my concern about the absence in the Bill of any form of independent inspection of the quality of fire and rescue services. Police forces are subject to review by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, which has a remit to ask the questions that citizens would ask, publish the answers in an accessible form and interpret the evidence. That allows the public to compare performance, and enables the public and their elected representatives to push for improvements.
Some people will no doubt resent or even resist the remit of HMIC. I can hear them now saying, “Who inspects the inspectors? Who are they to lord it over us on the frontline who know what’s what?”. In the same way, some people in the education sector resent the existence of Ofsted—not something I want to examine in detail here, I am sure the Committee will be pleased to know. My point is that some form of independent inspection is part of the process through which the public, as well as decision makers, can be assured about the quality of the public services on which they rely. It is also a route that identifies questions that need to be asked, issues that need to be flagged, concerns that need to be aired and challenges that need to be posed.
The last Labour Government brought to an end the former fire and rescue inspection regime. We replaced it with a role for the Audit Commission in providing a view on the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of fire services. Of course, the coalition Government, in their bonfire of the quangos, abolished the Audit Commission. It is an excellent development that, following the abolition of the Audit Commission and the national performance framework, the Local Government Association developed the operational assessment and fire peer programme as the focus of sector-led improvement, providing a boost to local accountability.
It is great news that, since its launch in 2012, all 46 fire and rescue services have undertaken the review. I am sure the Minister has heard, as I have, from front-line fire chiefs and operators that the peer review has helped them to develop their services and challenged them on areas where they could make their performance better. It has helped to plug the gap that was left behind, although some of us might think it is a bit too soft, because the peer review stuff does not have any teeth if people do not choose to improve the services that they are providing.
I am and always have been a great believer in local accountability. As a councillor for 18 years before being elected to this House, I experienced at first hand the discipline and accountability of an election, and the role of the ballot box in enabling our communities to have a say in the quality and effectiveness of the services that are delivered to them. It is a very powerful tool. However, excellent as the peer review programme and the accountability of the ballot box are, when it comes to a function as vital to public safety and community well-being as the fire and rescue service, I do not think they are good enough.
Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)
I am thinking back to the point about accountability and scrutiny in the fire service. As a councillor for nearly six years—I did not do quite as many years as the hon. Lady—it was the one area that I felt I had very little connection with, despite being an elected member. As a Member of Parliament, I have connected with the fire service in Hampshire and seen great work where it has looked at its peers and worked very well with the police. As a local councillor, I felt that the fire service was the one area that the electorate were excluded from in respect of how it worked with the community through elected bodies. I understand where you are coming from on this, but I like the idea of the PCC having a direct link with the community.
The Chair
May I gently remind the hon. Lady that she does not understand where I am coming from? I am completely neutral in this.
Lyn Brown
I am grateful to the hon. Lady. I think that I have moved on from where she is coming from, but I would be happy to have a conversation with her in the Tea Room about it. I left local government in 2005, when I came to this place. Before that, I sat for 15 years on the executive of my council, so I have experienced the scrutiny of my peers and I can tell you that in a place that was 60-nil, it was sometimes a little uncomfortable.
Lyn Brown
Did I do it again? I am sorry. It has been a long day and it is getting longer. I understand where the hon. Lady is coming from, but we do need to see the scrutiny of public services by people who are not immediately involved in delivering those services. We have to find a way to ensure that there is challenge and inspection.
At the moment, if a PCC takes over the fire and rescue service, three quarters of the services covered by that PCC will have an inspectorate judging what is done. Less than a quarter—the fire and rescue service—will have no inspection at all. That is not healthy for the public service that is not being scrutinised or inspected, nor is it healthy for the whole. I do not think that, in those circumstances, the fire and rescue service—the bit not being inspected—would receive equal consideration and concern to the parts being inspected. Does that make sense?
Jake Berry
The argument the hon. Lady is making for new clause 13 might receive further support if we understood how much the new fire inspectorate would cost. Is she able to update the Committee on the saving that was made when the previous fire inspectorate was abolished and the Audit Commission went in? Finally, can she say whether the reintroduction of the fire inspectorate would have the support of the fire unions?
Lyn Brown
I do not speak on behalf of the fire unions and I genuinely do not know their view on this. The scrutiny and audit function of the PCC costs £58,000 a year, which is funded by the Home Office. I do not have any figures on the abolition of the Audit Commission, nor on how much it cost for it to do anything.
I should tell the hon. Gentleman that, as a member of Her Majesty’s Opposition, one gets the Bill and then has the opportunity to read it and write one’s notes in the evenings and at weekends. I do not necessarily have the resources that are available to the Minister, although I must say that this Minister was very generous in allowing one or two of his resources to visit me for a whole hour to discuss the Bill. That is the aid that we get, so I am sorry that I do not have the figures at my fingertips. I am sure that the Minister will write to the hon. Gentleman with that information.
Mike Penning
Actually, I will be very generous and write to the whole Committee. I say subtly to the shadow Minister that she may find, when I get a chance to speak, that I have a degree of sympathy with what she is saying, although I will probably not be able to accept the new clause.
Lyn Brown
That is the best news I have had all day, but I will still go on.
If I were the Minister, there are three features of fire and rescue services and flood services on which I would want to be assured, so that I slept well at night. In homage to the three E’s of the post-1997 Labour Government of economy, efficiency and effectiveness—how could we forget?—I will name them the three R’s. As a Minister, I would want to know the following. Is each fire and rescue service robust—does it have the capacity to carry out the functions expected of it? As for resilience, can it continue to function under conditions of emergency and strain? On resources, does it have an adequate and sustainable budget to provide the resources it needs to undertake its functions? Those are the matters that I would expect the chief inspector of fire and rescue to support. In speaking to new clause 13, I am inviting the Minister to share with us how he envisages being assured that the fire and rescue services in England and Wales are robust, resilient and resourced.
New clause 14 would make the scrutiny and inspection regime I am calling for more rigorous by introducing a set of national standards into the fire service. The standard of protection and care that somebody receives from the fire and rescue service should not depend on where they live. Fire and rescue services have the freedom to develop their own standards of emergency cover, and that means that there is no national coherence in service standards. Across the country, despite the hard work of our dedicated and professional fire service, response times are increasing and fewer hours are being spent on preventive work as a result of the budget cuts imposed by the Government.
Being an ex-firefighter himself, I know that the Minister is aware that when dealing with a risk to life, every minute counts. Studies on response times have shown that if a person survives near to a fire for nine minutes, by one minute later the fire can increase in size by such an extent that they will die. More worryingly, if that is possible, nine minutes after ignition, a fire might still be small enough for the first crew in attendance to put it out with a hose reel, whereas one minute later, the fire could have grown by so much that it cannot be extinguished until another crew arrives and more complex firefighting systems are set up. The difference between arriving after nine and 10 minutes is not just a minute worse—response times do matter. I know that the Minister agrees with me on that, so I will not embarrass him by asking him to agree. He has been a professional, and he understands the issue.
A Government who were interested in leadership and the improvement of public services would introduce minimum standards across the country to tackle that issue. Those would provide a warning sign when reductions in spending and service provision created an unacceptable level of risk. It might also encourage an improvement in the slipping response times if standards were set starting from the principle of providing genuine and progressive improvement in the service that is provided to the public. Sadly, given the budget reductions before us, things will get worse.
The National Audit Office produced a report in November last year on the sustainability of fire services. It found that the Government did not know whether service reductions were leading to increased risk, and that they will only become aware of imprudent service reductions after the fact. That, the National Audit Office argued, was in large part because the Government do not model risk and have not sufficiently scrutinised the processes.
New clause 14 would provide national standards below which no fire and rescue service should drop. We would like to see national standards for response times; preparedness for major incidents; the quantity and quality of preventive work; firefighter fitness; equipment, including personal protective equipment; and training. Such a move would deal with many of the alarming findings in the National Audit Office report.
James Cleverly
This is an opportunity for the hon. Lady to take a breather. Does she not recognise that there is something of a contradiction between the points she was making on some of the earlier clauses about decentralisation, localisation, local accountability and local budget holding, and the position she is taking with this new clause, where she wants a whole raft of nationally set guidelines? There were national guidelines for the fire and rescue service—I concede that I might be wrong on this—under a Government formed by her party. How does she reconcile the localism she put forward in earlier amendments with the centralisation in her proposed national policy framework?
Lyn Brown
I admit that the hon. Gentleman has a point, but service reductions are going so far that in some parts of the country fire chiefs are telling me that their services are no longer sustainable. Some fire chiefs tell me that it is taking them 20 minutes to get to a shout and that if a person lives in the middle of the country, it takes at least 20 minutes for a fire appliance to get to them if there is a fire.
I am arguing for transparency. If I lived in a home where I knew a fire appliance was not going to be able to get to me for 20 minutes to half an hour, I would first want to have a conversation with my elected representatives who sit on the fire authority or the PCC, whoever it is who is responsible and talk to them about that 25 minutes to half an hour. I would be painfully aware that x fire station that was closer to me had been closed down a few years ago because of budget reductions. I would also be in a position where I could, as a home owner, make sure that I had all the necessaries in my home. For instance, I might want to invest in a sprinkler system. I would want to make sure that I had alarms. I think transparency is essential.
We are trying to open up a discussion about response times and standards because I do not think that that discussion is happening in the country in an open way, and it is about time it did. This is a probing amendment and I will not press it to a vote. We need to have a conversation collectively about what standards we expect from our fire services.
Jake Berry
Will the shadow Minister concede that if she succeeds in amendment 179 about a local inspection framework or gets the best news she has been waiting for all day from the Minister if he moves slightly and accepts that this amendment, although a probing one, is unnecessary because the standards could be set locally by local inspection committee?
Lyn Brown
I accept that, which is why this is a probing amendment. We are trying to say to the Committee that there are consequences if a PCC takes over a fire and rescue service. Three quarters of the service that the PCC will be responsible for is inspected fiercely; one quarter is not. We are very worried that our fire services are going to become Cinderella services. We are raising mechanisms by which we can have some kind of faith that the fire service will be able to deliver the service that people expect it to deliver. Many people in our constituencies and communities would be highly concerned to hear that there was a 20 minute lull before a fire engine or appliance turned up at their doorstep to put out a fire if they had called for it. We need to be much more transparent about this.
James Cleverly
I appreciate that this is a probing amendment designed to stimulate discussion on a particular topic. I congratulate the hon. Lady on doing that very thing. If the Opposition’s amendments are not successful in delaying more direct involvement for PCCs in the governance of fire, the hon. Lady and her colleagues could push for an explicit set of performance indicators for PCCs at election time so that they are held to account for the performance of their fire service. That might go a long way towards providing the assurances that she wants—I am trying to be helpful.
While I do not want to sound like a broken record, it reminds me that if I do not have a local councillor who actually sits on the fire authority—as I do in Essex—having that information under the current regime gives me no power whatever. I may be disgruntled about performance or pleased with it, but there is nothing I can do about it at the ballot box. Does the hon. Lady agree?
Lyn Brown
I have forgotten what the hon. Gentleman said at the beginning. He suggested that there should be performance indicators. If we had a set of national standards, they would in effect be a performance indicator for a PCC to work towards. I do not accept the issue around accountability: the idea that the person responsible for the fire service has to be a ward councillor in that area. We vote for individuals to serve on the council. The council is then elected. It is of a certain political colour or hue. That political colour or hue presumably determines whether x or y resources are put into a service. If I was unhappy with the performance of my fire service, I would vote for a different political representative, of a different colour or hue, who was elected to my council.
Lyn Brown
In his dreams. Currently, each fire and rescue authority carries out its own integrated risk management plan. Using the level of risks and the resource available to the service, they set their own standards. Those standards can vary both in outcome and in how they are measured. For example, in 2013-14 Merseyside fire and rescue service had a three-tier target for response standards. The standard for incidents that were considered high risk was set at 5 minutes, 59 seconds; medium risk at 6 minutes, 59 seconds; and low risk, 7 minutes, 59 seconds. In the same year, Cheshire fire and rescue service replaced its variable response standards with a blanket 10-minute response standard for all incidents where someone’s life might be at risk. That is particularly shocking in light of the information regarding response times I referred to earlier. It really is time for us to begin to think about what a standard response time should look like across the country. I know that the term “postcode lottery” has become a cliché when we talk about public services, but those figures show that the standard of service people are receiving really does depend on where they live. We do not accept that inequality in service in our schools or in our hospitals, and we should not accept it in our fire service.
There is another concern. While I believe that most people understand that the fire and rescue service is delivered by their local authority, people still have some concept of fire and rescue as a national service that should be delivered in a uniform fashion. Therefore, even where people understand that it is provided locally, failure to deliver a reasonable standard in one area will directly affect people’s trust in their own fire and rescue service.
In conclusion, the system as it stands is unfair and quite possibly unsafe. National standards have worked in our schools and hospitals, but the Government have not introduced national standards in the fire service. This is not just about creating national standards for national standards’ sake, but trying to use them to improve the service. They can be used as a tool to arrest slipping response times and ensure that everybody receives an acceptable level of service from their fire and rescue service. If the Minister truly wants to show leadership—and I know that he does—and if the Government are interested in improving public services, I urge him to support our new clause 14, along with new clause 13 and amendment 179. Inspection, scrutiny and standards are all central to public service delivery.
Mike Penning
I will deal with the bit I cannot agree with. We probably could have saved the Committee 25 minutes, because I agree with most of the latter part of the hon. Lady’s comments, and we can do something about them. It was not the latter part of her speech that convinced me, but the first line, because it is common sense.
On amendment 179, when a PCC takes responsibility for the fire and rescue service, the remit of the associated police and crime panel will be extended to include scrutiny of the PCC’s fire and rescue function. Under the balanced appointment objective, which was set out in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011, the panel has to have the skills to make sure that it can act, as the hon. Lady requested. Not one of them has come to me and indicated that they are so rushed that they could not do this. Bringing other skills to that panel would be really good.
On inspection, the present peer review is something that the Home Secretary and I, and all the chiefs I have spoken to, believe is not acceptable, and we are going to review it. I will not set up a brand spanking new one because it was abolished for a reason, as it was very expensive. However, we will have a non-peer review. If someone is reviewing their mates down the road, the assumption, although I know they are all professionals, is that they will look at what they want to look at, not at what they do not. We will look at that, although I am not certain I will have a provision ready for Report. We will work together on that, because it is particularly important. It is also important that we get together all the professionals in the fire service, including the unions, to ensure that we can do that.
I am sympathetic, too, to the point on national standards. This is where I will be gentle. We were not in government 13 years ago when national standards were abolished and it was decided to make decisions locally, as the hon. Lady remarked. However, we need to have something not dissimilar to the College of Policing, so that we can bring professionals together to have a better understanding of response.
This is a really complicated area. I am conscious that the workforce in the fire service has moved an awfully long way in the past couple of years. However, to get this right we may need to do more. In the north-west, referred to by the hon. Lady, there are only 24 retained firefighters in the whole of Merseyside. In my part of the world, we have an awful lot. As for the hon. Lady’s constituency, there are none in London. It is ludicrous in the 21st century that stations are closing when we could have day manning—eight hours—and night retained.
I have said before that I was an Essex fireman. This is very important—not that I was a fireman, because I was not a very good one—because I was a qualified fireman who went to work and did my job. However, when something happened on the hon. Lady’s patch and they needed mutual aid from Essex, believe it or not, we had to come from Southend, Leigh or Basildon to go to London ground, because London would not allow retained firefighters to come to London ground, even though they needed the help. I know the reason why but I will not bring it up in Committee because it would not help. They had to come and back-fill for us, so we as whole-timers came into London. In the 21st century, when so many of those retained firefighters are whole-time, certainly in my part of the world, that is the sort of thing we are looking at.
In the north-west, Lancashire has moved to an 8/8 system. The whole-time firefighters do the busy times—they are all there at the same time—then they move to a whole-time retained situation at night. That is why one size is not going to fit all for the whole country; it cannot. The hon. Member for North Durham, who is not in his seat at the moment, might be interested to know that there are police community support officers in that part of the world who are retained firefighters. I cannot think of anything more community spirited in this wonderful country where volunteering is widespread. I know we will talk about volunteering again later. What more could we want?
One size is not going to fit all, which is why 13 years ago, the Labour party abolished response times. It is for locals to make up their own mind. However, I take on board the fact that we need to look carefully, as we have done with the police and the College of Policing, at a better way to ensure that we have a common standard that includes recruit training. Admittedly, many fire services around the country have not recruited for many years, but they will do so eventually, because that is the nature of the job as people retire. We should also include training through the system and the ranks, as we get skills coming forward.
I fully understand that point, and I will do as much as I can to work together with the relevant bodies on that. I think the hon. Lady might agree, as she indicated this was a probing amendment, and withdraw it.
Lyn Brown
The Minister has just made my day. What can I say? I am a very happy shadow Minister standing here. It is lovely to be so loved. I also want to pay respect to the retained firefighters, but, if the Minister does not mind, I am not going to be drawn into a debate about crewing, although I recognise what he says about boundaries. For me, that is where the Bill does not do it. We need to make sure our borders are softer than they actually are in order to keep our communities safe. However, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 183, in schedule 1, page 113, line 38, at end insert “, whereby any budget transferred must be maintained at that same level for a maximum period of five years.”
Amendment 184, in schedule 1, page 113, line 41, after “rights”, insert “, budgets”.
This amendment would protect agreed FRS budgets.
Lyn Brown
These amendments would protect fire service budgets for five years after a PCC takes over management of a fire and rescue authority. We are concerned that PCCs who have taken on responsibility for the fire and rescue service will have done so possibly to use fire budgets to bolster the spending power they have in the police service. They will not do this because they are bad people or because they do not care about the fire service; they will do it because the police service has been experiencing severe cuts in recent years, and the police and crime commissioner’s role and top priority is what it says on the tin: police and crime commissioner, not fire commissioner.
The police force is facing funding challenges. Budgets for next year have not been protected in real terms. They are being cut again for the sixth year in a row, at a time when crime is rising and the country is facing increasing risk. Some 18,000 police staff were cut during the previous Parliament, 12,000 of them front-line and operational staff. Such cuts are disproportionately affecting our metropolitan areas. For example, West Midlands police has been hit twice as hard as Surrey police. With six years of cuts behind them and another four years of cutbacks planned, the police are facing a whole decade of cuts to funding. It is no wonder that PCCs might be eyeing up the chance to take over the fire budgets to prop up their own dwindling resources, but this cannot be allowed to happen.
The fire and rescue service reduced spending by 12% during the previous Parliament—a cumulative cash cut of £236 million—and there will be more to come. We know from the local government funding settlement that fire and rescue services are expected to cut spending by a further £135 million by the end of the Parliament. A stretched service is going to get squeezed even tighter.
As I have said, the fire service is already experiencing significant budgetary pressures, and this is damaging services. Since 2009-10, there has been a huge cut in the number of whole-time firefighters. Durham fire and rescue service has cut its whole-time firefighters by 73, while Surrey has been cut by 91 and Cleveland by 120. Surrey fire and rescue service has also seen its number of fire appliances cut by a quarter, from 40 to 30. Hertfordshire lost a quarter of its fire stations in the same period. I wonder what the people of Hemel Hempstead think of that.
The Chancellor’s budget cuts are having a real impact on our fire and rescue services. Despite the hard work and professionalism of our firefighters up and down the country, we have seen response times increasing. I know that the West Midlands fire service, despite its excellent work, has seen almost a minute added to its response times in all incident types since 2010. A minute might not sound a lot, but I know that if I am trapped in a car, crushed by the steering wheel, or in a house on fire, every minute will feel like a lifetime. The Minister, as a former firefighter, knows that a minute can make the difference between life and death. Every second counts. I know that not all changes to response times can be attributed to funding for the fire service—our roads are a heck of a lot busier—but when a local fire station closes, response times are likely to increase.
Mike Penning
Fire services, like the rest of local government, asked for a four-year settlement and were given one. They know exactly where their budgets are. The Government amendment to schedule 1, to which we will come later, ensures that there will remain clear, transparent accounting arrangements for fire funding, and that effective scrutiny and accountability arrangements are in place. I reiterate that a PCC will not be able to use a fire budget for policing or vice versa. It says specifically on the face of the Bill that that cannot be done. Nothing in the Bill indicates anything to do with privatisation. I never heard of the fire service being privatised in the whole time that I served in it. I know that a bit of scaremongering is going on, but the Bill is absolutely rigid on that.
It is for Parliament to decide the funding arrangements, but the funding is set in statute, and everybody knows exactly where they are. There will be separate paths. Of course accountability is necessary, for instance on procurement, as we discussed earlier. I intend to publish a procurement table soon, like the one I published for the police, so that everybody in the country will know the main items purchased by the fire authorities, how much they paid for them and any discrepancies, so we can bring things together. I have used white shirts as an obvious example. At the moment, I can guarantee that most white shirts are being bought by the police and not by the fire service. There is no collaboration in the purchasing requirements. Surely that is logical, but the accounting for that will not come out of one budget; naturally enough, it will be done across the piece.
I think that generally, the shadow Minister feels that money could be taken from one pot and put in the other, but it does not say that on the face of the Bill, and I give guarantees on the Bill. She looks at me very nicely, as if she might not believe me. The Bill is quite specific that there will be two separate funding streams, to be accounted for with the accountability and scrutiny required. Only when collaboration occurs do we want to consider joint purchasing, and then it will be separated out. I honestly do not see the need for the amendment. If people keep talking about privatisation of the fire service, somebody somewhere might believe it, although not anyone on the Government Benches.
Lyn Brown
I am grateful to the Minister for what he has said. It has gone further than what is written on the face of the Bill. I ask him to take our amendment away and think about it, and consider whether he can make what is on the face of the Bill just a little more convincing. At the moment, we are not convinced, and there are people out there who are not either. We would be grateful if he considered doing so, but we will not push the amendment to a vote. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 1, in schedule 1, page 114, line 34, at end insert—
‘(3A) A fire and rescue authority created by an order under section 4A must appoint a person to be responsible for the proper administration of the authority’s financial affairs (a “chief finance officer”).
(3B) A fire and rescue authority created by an order under section 4A must appoint a person to act as chief finance officer of the authority if and so long as—
(a) that post is vacant, or
(b) the holder of that post is, in the authority’s opinion, unable to carry out the duties of that post.
(3C) Section 113 of the Local Government Finance Act 1988 (qualifications of responsible officer) applies to a person appointed under subsection (3A) or (3B) as it applies to the persons having responsibility for the administration of financial affairs mentioned in that section.”—(Mike Penning.)
This amendment and amendment 2 require a fire and rescue authority created by an order under new section 4A of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 to appoint a chief finance officer who is responsible for the proper administration of the authority’s financial affairs.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments 2 to 24 and 26.
Mike Penning
I am pleased to say, based on my scribbled notes from earlier discussions, that these are consequential amendments.
Lyn Brown
I would like to speak about amendment 8, which is part of this group. If the Minister wanted to call for a comfort break and a cup of tea, I would not object.
The amendment states that a chief constable, when playing the role of a fire and rescue authority, must secure “good value for money” from the fire and rescue service and from persons exercising functions delegated by the chief constable. I genuinely do not understand why the Government have tabled the amendment. I honestly do not get it. Would a chief constable performing the role of a fire and rescue authority in this scenario not already be covered by the obligation for local authorities to seek best value? If so, what is different and additional about the amendment? It appears to have an exclusively monetary focus on value, but does the Minister really think that fire and rescue authorities are not already trying to deliver the best service they can with the budgets they are set? If he does, why is he not confident that chief constables will also be honest and diligent administrators under his single employer model?
I must say that the task of deciphering the Government’s intentions is sometimes made more difficult by the process whereby they carry out legislation. The amendment was one among 56 pages of amendments that were dumped on my desk just a few days before this sitting. That meant that my whole weekend—Friday night, Saturday and Sunday—was taken up by working on the Bill. If the Bill had been in better order before it came before the Committee, the Minister would not have had to table so many amendments just before the sitting.
These are amendments, rather than original clauses, so they do not come with explanatory notes. I have not had the time to scrutinise or study them properly. I wonder whether this is the right way to go about parliamentary process. I have stood up to speak on this amendment so I can draw to the Committee’s attention the concerns that have been brought to me. The amendment might be used as a justification for the outsourcing of front-line services. One could imagine a situation where a chief constable outsources services to a private contractor and argues that his hands were tied as the contractor could deliver the service at a lower cost than the direct provision by the fire and rescue service.
We will get to privatisation later, but I am sure that the Minister would like to take the opportunity to put those fears to bed by offering a comprehensive reason as to why the Government felt the need to table amendment 8.
Mike Penning
I cannot believe that we are talking about privatisation again, especially on this group of amendments, but let me reiterate what I said earlier. There is absolutely no pressure, innuendo or anything else in the Bill on privatisation. The shadow Minister mentioned best value and asked why we are doing this. When I became the Fire Minister, I took a look at type-approved procurement. Our police service desperately needs body armour, and there was nearly £300 difference between one force and another. Where is the best value there? On batons, there was a difference of nearly £80. I would love to say that every single force will do exactly what we would expect them to do and get best value for the taxpayer, but with the Bill we are ensuring that that is exactly what they do and that is what it says on the tin. It has nothing to do with private provision. I hope that I have helped the hon. Lady out once and for all, but perhaps not.
Lyn Brown
I will press the Minister further on privatisation a little later, but I genuinely do not understand: first, why amendment 8 was not in the Bill in the first place; secondly, why it does not come with an explanatory note; and, thirdly, why the chief constable is not already covered by the obligation on local authorities to seek best value. I genuinely do not get it, and I would be grateful if the Minister let me know why the amendment is here in this form. It is being added late to the Bill with no explanatory note and, because there is no explanatory note, it is open-ended.
Amendment 1 agreed to.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 189, in schedule 1, page 115, line 37, at end insert—
‘(13) A police and crime commissioner who becomes a fire and rescue authority is not permitted to privatise any part of the fire and rescue service.
(14) For the purposes of this Bill, privatisation is defined as—
(a) the transfer of ownership of the fire and rescue service to a private sector entity, or
(b) outsourcing of the authority’s frontline functions under this Act to a private sector company.”
This amendment, along with amendment 188, would prevent a PCC from privatising the part of the fire and rescue service which they assume control of.
Lyn Brown
I am disappointed that the Minister could not answer the basic questions arising from the previous group of amendments, and I would be grateful if he wrote to me and the rest of the Committee on that. I genuinely do not understand why amendment 8 was not included in the Bill as introduced, why it had to be an amendment and why, being an amendment, it is not covered by an explanatory note, which would have made it easier for us all to understand.
Amendments 188 and 189 seek cast-iron guarantees from the Government that the reforms are not a back door for privatisation of the fire and rescue service. The Minister may claim that I am being alarmist in raising the threat of privatisation, but there is some evidence that the danger is real. In 2012, Cleveland fire and rescue service received funding from the Government’s mutual support programme to look into becoming a social enterprise. We argued at the time that that was a backdoor to privatisation, and we were right. At the moment, there are core tasks of firefighting that, by law, can be carried out only by an employee of a fire and rescue authority. The then fire Minister, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), wrote to the Select Committee on Regulatory Reform stating that he wanted to change the law to
“enable fire and rescue authorities in England to contract out their full range of services to a suitable provider”.
Ostensibly, the measure was proposed to allow Cleveland fire and rescue service to become a social enterprise but, as we said at the time, the change in the law would have meant that there was nothing to stop fire and rescue authorities contracting out to other suitable providers. Profit-making firms would inevitably have followed, especially when we consider competition laws and the duties on authorities, such as that provided for by Government amendment 8, requiring them to seek best value for money. In fact, it makes me wonder why amendment 8 came so late.
The current Minister of State for Trade and Investment, Lord Maude, who was then Paymaster General, was unequivocal about the Government’s support. He also expressed hope that more fire and rescue services, and indeed more public services in other areas, would follow suit:
“If a fire brigade can spin itself out as a mutual business, it shows there are few no-go areas of public service where this innovative approach to delivery cannot reach.”
Few no-go areas of public service. A rare moment of clarity from a Minister.
In the face of opposition, the Government eventually got cold feet about turning Cleveland fire and rescue service into a social enterprise, but I have not forgotten their support and their attempts to change laws that prevent privatisation, nor have those working in the fire service. What reason do we have for thinking that the Government have since changed their intentions? Before the election, I spoke to independent consultants and experts about the future viability of the fire and rescue service. They told me that, under the Government’s spending plans, the fire service could only go on by adopting one of three reforms. They could entirely abandon the model of full-time professional firefighters, they could be consolidated into one centrally managed national service, or they could privatise the services to allow them to make a profit from those who can afford to pay for extra fire provision. Since the election, we have seen that the Government wish the fire service to reduce spending by a further £135 million by the end of the Parliament, so I ask the Minister, “Which is it?” I know it is not a national service, or a part-time fire service, even in our urban areas. So is it privatisation?
James Cleverly
I appreciate the hon. Lady’s giving way yet again; she is being generous with her time. Will she recognise that the contract that took the London fire brigade’s fleet and its maintenance into private ownership was signed under a Labour-run Administration in a Labour-run fire authority, using exactly the model that she claims would prevent such problems occurring? If she is willing to concede those points, will she also concede that proposing the structures she does as a defence against badly drafted contracts is no defence at all?
Lyn Brown
No, no, I do not need that, but I happily accept that the contracts I have spoken of came under a Labour Administration.
We all benefit from full and proper mitigation of the dangers posed by fire, flooding and other natural disasters. If a factory is ablaze, it is not just the factory owner and the workers who benefit from a swift response, but all the people in surrounding buildings who do not see the fire spread. It follows that we put all that at risk when provision of fire services moves away from the desire to increase resilience and mitigate risk.
If resources are diverted away from unprofitable and risky objectives into covering profitable but comparatively less risky objectives, we all suffer and are slightly less safe. Make no mistake: if and when a fire service is allowed to be run for profit, that is what may well happen. Businesses with big pockets but relatively low fire risks will divert resources away from where they are really needed. We cannot allow that to happen. The principle that protection from the risk of fire is a public good and a universal public interest is what makes privatising the fire and rescue service a fundamentally bad idea.
When the Government abandoned their plans for back-door privatisation in Cleveland, the then Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government offered what was, to be fair, an unequivocal commitment to prevent privatisation of fire and rescue services in future. This is what he said:
“Let me be absolutely clear. We will make no move, directly or indirectly, that involves the privatisation of the fire service. It is not our intention, nor will we allow, private firms to run the fire service.”
I invite the Minister to make a similar unequivocal statement today. In fairness, I have asked him to do so before, but I feel that he has ducked the question. If he does it again today, I put it to him that people have every right to be worried that the reforms are intended to be a pathway to back-door privatisation, especially if he rejects our amendments ruling out front-line privatisation.
If the reforms are intended as a back door to the privatisation of the fire and rescue service, that is a disaster. Privatisation is not in the interests of public safety, it is not popular and when it has been tried, it has failed. No wonder the Government would not contemplate privatising the service in the open. I hope that they do not try to get there covertly. I am looking for an absolutely clear statement that this Government will not allow privatisation.
Mike Penning
Let me make it clear that there are no plans to change the legislation to enable privatisation of the fire service—end of story. I completely agree with what the Secretary of State said. Hopefully, the scaremongering can now cease. However, I say to the shadow Minister that there are measures restricting what work can be done by our fire services that is presently being done by the private sector. I am looking very carefully at them, because I am not happy with them.
Going back all those years to when I was a young fireman, one thing that I used to do was fire prevention officer work. We would go out and do inspections of care homes and old people’s homes. We had a relationship. Let me give the Committee an example of what happened in my own constituency. I got a phone call from the warden of a residential home saying that some of the residents were in tears and very upset because the fire brigade had been there to do an inspection and had told them they had to remove their mats, all the pictures from the corridor and their plastic flowers from the windowsills. Why would the fire service do that? I shot over there and said, “I have no idea why the fire service would dream of doing such a thing,” because personally, as an ex-fireman, I could not see the risk. “Let me ask the chief constable.” The chief constable wrote back to me and said, “It’s a private company doing it for the local authorities. We can’t bid for that work, because we are not allowed to show that we make a profit from it.” That is not privatisation of the fire service; it is doing work at cost so that the private sector does not scare people in my constituency. That is one reason why I am considering the measures carefully.
To give another example, I went into the workshops in Hampshire; they have some fantastic workshops. They are not allowed to bid for work from local government agencies, because they are not allowed to make a profit. I do not think that the shadow Minister does not want those facilities to be used in the right sort of way, but I categorically reject the need for this change, because there are no plans to change the legislation, which is not in this legislation. For instance, a firefighter has a right of entry. That right is reserved to firefighters. That cannot be done. The police have rights and the fire service has rights. That is in statute.
I say, very respectfully, that we should just nip this in the bud here and now. I cannot be any more adamant. Actually, perhaps I could go a little bit further: I would not be the fire Minister should we privatise the fire service. I would not do that job. And there is no plan.
Lyn Brown
I do not care whether there is a need for it or not. I do not understand why the Minister will not accept it. I will push it to a vote, but I would be really grateful if he came back with a form of words that were his own and that he felt made this position absolutely clear in the Bill.
Mike Penning
I could not have been any more explicit. I do not think any Minister ever has been more explicit about the lack of a need for an amendment, because the legislation is not even here to allow that to happen. So why would I accept an amendment that is on a false premise? That is why not. I suggest the hon. Lady pushes the amendment to a vote—let the Committee decide.
Lyn Brown
The Minister understands where this is coming from, because he understands what fissures were rocketed through the fire service community when the whole Cleveland debate was happening, and when his own Ministers were talking so expansively about how this would be a jolly good thing.
The Chair
For the sake of getting the procedure right, I understand that the hon. Lady wants to have a Division on amendment 189, in which case she will now have to withdraw amendment 188.
Lyn Brown
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendments made: 2, in schedule 1, page 114, line 37, after “such” insert “other”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 1.
Amendment 3, in schedule 1, page 115, line 37, at end insert—
“4DA Requirement for authority created by section 4A order to have fire fund
(1) Each fire and rescue authority created by an order under section 4A must keep a fund to be known as the fire fund.
(2) All of the receipts of a fire and rescue authority created by an order under section 4A must be paid into the relevant fire fund.
(3) All of the expenditure of a fire and rescue authority created by an order under section 4A must be paid out of the relevant fire fund.
(4) A fire and rescue authority created by an order under section 4A must keep accounts of payments made into or out of the relevant fire fund.
(5) Subsections (2) and (3) are subject to the provisions of—
(a) the scheme established under section 26 of the Fire Services Act 1947 (Firemen’s Pension Scheme) (as continued in force by order under section 36),
(b) a scheme under section 34 (pensions etc), or
(c) scheme regulations within the meaning of the Public Service Pensions Act 2013.
(6) In this section “relevant fire fund”, in relation to a fire and rescue authority created by an order under section 4A, means the fire fund which that authority keeps.”—(Mike Penning.)
This amendment requires a fire and rescue authority created by an order under new section 4A of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 to keep a fire fund and to pay receipts into and expenditure out of that fund.
Amendment proposed: 189, in schedule 1, page 115, line 37, at end insert—
“(13) A police and crime commissioner who becomes a fire and rescue authority is not permitted to privatise any part of the fire and rescue service.
(14) For the purposes of this Bill, privatisation is defined as—
(a) the transfer of ownership of the fire and rescue service to a private sector entity, or
(b) outsourcing of the authority’s frontline functions under this Act to a private sector company.”—(Lyn Brown.)
This amendment, along with amendment 188, would prevent a PCC from privatising the part of the fire and rescue service which they assume control of.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 176, in schedule 1, page 121, line 17, leave out paragraph 10.
This amendment will retain the prohibition on employing police staff to carry out any of the functions of the Fire and Rescue Service.
Lyn Brown
The Bill contains three models of PCCs managing the fire and rescue service. Amendments 175 and 176 would remove the single-employer model.
A large proportion of the work carried out by the fire service is preventive work. In 2013-14, fire and rescue authorities and partner organisations undertook more than 672,196 home fire safety checks—10% fewer than in 2012-13. When this preventive work is done, smoke alarms are checked, sprinklers are fitted and homes are made safer. As we heard earlier in the Committee, fire staff also perform public health functions, such as conducting temperature checks for the elderly and referring on vulnerable people who welcome them into their homes to public bodies that can help them. This preventive work is not an add-on to the fire service’s work; it is at the core of what it does.
We need to be honest: there are some people who would not welcome a policeman into their homes without a warrant. Police officers are enforcers. It can be scary having them turn up on the doorstep, and we often fear the worst. There are fears that, under the single-employer model, it may be more difficult for the fire service to carry out its vital preventive work if a member of the public is concerned that the firefighter coming into their home might have to share information with or report back to their boss, the police. This is not an attack on the police—mine in West Ham are great—but we have to recognise that there is a fundamental difference between the humanitarian service that the fire and rescue service provides and the law enforcement service provided by the police. In order for the public to allow firefighters into their homes for preventive checks, trust in the fire service has to be at a level that is, quite simply, not paralleled in the police force.
There is also the issue of workers in the police force and the fire and rescue service enjoying different terms and conditions of employment, not least on the right to strike. There are legitimate fears that the single-employer model will be used as a means of cutting back on the workers’ rights of those in the fire service. Furthermore, I am genuinely concerned that this model may lead to privatisation in the fire and rescue service. I know that the Minister is going to get grumpy with me, but I gently say to him that Ministers come and go, and although I would like to see him in his job forever—well, until I get there, of course—we need to make sure that we protect the fire service from encroaching privatisation.
There will be a duty on the chief constable to ensure that he is getting good value for money from the functions relating to the fire and rescue services that are conferred on the chief constable. That is sufficiently ambiguous—a bit like the Conservative party manifesto in this area—as to be interpreted as empowering the chief constable to find an alternative provider if they think they can get better value for money.
I urge the Minister to accept our amendments. The single-employer model is a danger to the independence of the fire service and is raising concerns that these changes are more about slashing workers’ rights and privatising the public service than the public good. The single-employer model may undermine the trust between the fire and rescue service and the public, making vital preventive work more difficult. There is also concern that this part of the Bill might lead to privatisation through the back door.
Mike Penning
I beg the Committee’s pardon, but I shall not respond to the comments on privatisation again; I have addressed them and we are where we need to be.
If I accepted amendment 75, it would remove a key advantage of the Bill: the ability of local areas to realise the benefits of the single-employer model where the local case is made. In doing so, it would restrict the options available to local areas in driving further collaboration between the police force and fire services. It would destroy a key part of the Bill.
Although the shadow Minister seems to think that I will be the Minister for ever such a long time, that is not the case, because I am an old man. It is imperative that we keep the three options as they are. The key to the Bill is giving the options for collaboration. The single-employer model is vital to that. I therefore urge the shadow Minister to withdraw her amendment. Otherwise, we will have to vote it down.
Lyn Brown
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendments made: 6, in schedule 1, page 118, line 1, after “(7)” insert
“Subject to subsections (7A) to (7C),”
This amendment and amendment 7 apply where fire and rescue functions are delegated to a chief constable by an order under new section 4F of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004. They require the police force’s chief finance officer to be responsible for the proper administration of financial affairs relating to those functions and enable other employees to be responsible for financial affairs relating both to fire and to policing.
Amendment 7, in schedule 1, page 118, line 5, at end insert—
‘(7A) Where an order under section 4F is in force in relation to the chief constable of the police force for a police area, the person who is for the time being the police force’s chief finance officer is to be responsible for the proper administration of financial affairs relating to the exercise of functions delegated to the chief constable under the order.
(7B) Subsection (7) does not prevent a person who is employed as a finance officer for fire functions from being at the same time employed as a finance officer for police functions.
(7C) In subsection (7B)—
“finance officer for fire functions” means a member of a chief constable’s fire and rescue staff who—
(a) is not a chief finance officer of the kind mentioned in subsection (7A), and
(b) is employed to carry out duties relating to the proper administration of financial affairs relating to the exercise of functions delegated to the chief constable under an order under section 4F;
“finance officer for police functions” means a member of a chief constable’s civilian staff within the meaning of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 who—
(a) is not a chief finance officer of the kind mentioned in subsection (7A), and
(b) is employed to carry out duties relating to the proper administration of a police force’s financial affairs.”
See the explanatory statement for amendment 6.
Amendment 8, in schedule 1, page 118, line 45, at end insert—
‘( ) The chief constable must secure that good value for money is obtained in exercising—
(a) functions which are delegated under the order, and
(b) functions relating to fire and rescue services which are conferred on the chief constable by or by virtue of any enactment.
( ) The chief constable must secure that persons exercising functions delegated by the chief constable under the order obtain good value for money in exercising those functions.”
This amendment places a duty on a chief constable to whom functions are delegated under an order under new section 4F of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 to secure good value for money in the exercise of the chief constable’s fire and rescue functions.
Amendment 9, in schedule 1, page 118, line 48, leave out “and” and insert—
“() secure the exercise of the duties relating to fire and rescue services which are imposed on the chief constable by or by virtue of any enactment,”
This amendment and amendments 10 and 11 ensure that a fire and rescue authority created by an order under new section 4A of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 may scrutinise the exercise of fire and rescue functions conferred on a chief constable by any enactment as well as functions delegated to the chief constable under an order under new section 4F of that Act.
Amendment 10, in schedule 1, page 119, line 2, at end insert “, and
() secure that functions relating to fire and rescue services which are conferred or imposed on the chief constable by or by virtue of any enactment are exercised efficiently and effectively.”
See the explanatory statement for amendment 9.
Amendment 11, in schedule 1, page 119, line 4, leave out
“the functions which are delegated under the order”
and insert “such functions”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 9.
Amendment 104, in schedule 1, page 120, line 11, at end insert—
In section 5A (powers of certain fire and rescue authorities) in subsection (3) (authorities to which powers apply)—
(a) omit the “or” at the end of paragraph (c), and
(b) at the end of paragraph (d) insert “, or
(e) created by an order under section 4A.””
This amendment and amendment 105 make provision for the general powers of fire and rescue authorities in section 5A of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 to apply to a fire and rescue authority created by an order under new section 4A of that Act.
Amendment 105, in schedule 1, page 120, leave out lines 13 to 27.—(Mike Penning.)
See the explanatory statement for amendment 104.
Amendment proposed: 178, in schedule 1, page 123, line 17, at end insert—
‘(4) An order under section 4A, where modified or not by the Secretary of State, may only be made with either: consent of the relevant local authority and relevant fire and rescue authority, or a majority vote by local people through referendum.”—(Lyn Brown.)
This amendment would ensure that a PCC can only take over a Fire and Rescue Service with the approval of local people or their local representatives.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Lyn Brown
I beg to move amendment 185, in clause 7, page 6, line 16, after “functions”, insert
“, with the decision of the monitoring officer in that authority being final in the event of a dispute on fire related business,”
This amendment would empower the monitoring officer to deal with any disputes in county or unitary fire and rescue authorities about what matters a police and crime commissioner could vote on.
As drafted, the Bill fails to deal with any disputes in county or unitary fire and rescue authorities about what matters a police and crime commissioner should be able to vote upon. Amendment 185 would remove any ambiguity and empower the relevant monitoring officer to rule on any disputes. This is a dead simple amendment, and I would be really surprised if the Minister did not accept it.
Clause 7 would allow a police and crime commissioner to attend, speak and vote at meetings of county or unitary fire and rescue authorities where the business relates to the functions of the council as a fire and rescue authority. This is the so-called representation model: PCCs have a role in the governance of fire and rescue services. In the case of the 15 county fire and rescue authorities—such as Cumbria, Gloucestershire, Northamptonshire and Suffolk, as well as the case of Cornwall—that means they could attend full council meetings when business relating to the functions of the fire and rescue authority was being discussed.
For some items of business, it will be easy to decide whether the business relates to the function of the fire and rescue authority, and therefore whether the PCC is able to speak and vote on it. However, there is a danger that a PCC may use his or her voting rights on fire matters to proliferate their influence throughout local government. Even if they do not wish to do so, there is plenty of scope for dispute about what voting and speaking rights they have. A PCC could potentially make the case that almost any area of business relates to the fire service. Planning could have an effect on response times. Should a PCC be able to speak and vote, therefore, on all matters relating to planning? The fire service clearly has a role to play in any local government public health strategy. Does that empower a PCC to speak on any matter pertaining to public health?
At council budget-setting meetings in February each year, councils discuss their whole budgets. One may decide to invest more in adult social care and less in the fire and rescue service as part of a balanced budget package. During the meeting, the council will vote on whether to agree the overall budget proposals. The PCC may not wish to see reductions in the fire and rescue service budget. Is the PCC entitled to vote on the budget as a whole? That would have implications for who gets social care, the safeguarding of children, waste disposal and even road repairs.
It is not sensible for us in Westminster to try to answer such questions legislatively. They are better answered locally by those who intimately understand how their council works. Our amendment would give the local authority’s monitoring officer the final adjudicating authority in county or unitary fire and rescue authorities about what matters the police and crime commissioner can and cannot vote on. They will do so by weighing up what business relates to the functions of the council as a fire and rescue authority. I look forward with much interest to what the Minister has to say about our excellent amendment.
Mike Penning
If clause 7 were not in the Bill, I would expect the shadow Minister to introduce it. The clause provides for PCCs to request to be represented on the fire and rescue authorities where they do not take responsibility for governance of the fire and rescue service. Where such a request is accepted, PCCs would have full voting rights to ensure that they take part in the business of the fire and rescue authority in a meaningful and effective way. Where the county or unitary FRAs do not have a dedicated committee for fire, the Bill provides for the PCCs’ ability to attend, speak and vote to be restricted to matters relating to the functions of a fire and rescue service authority, and local appointing committees to consider how these arrangements work in practice.
Lyn Brown
I am grateful to the Minister for his clarification. I am happy to beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 7 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 8
The London Fire Commissioner
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Lyn Brown
We support the reforms to the governance of the London fire brigade. I will not oppose the clause, but I will speak with some sadness about why we have come to support the abolition of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority.
It is fair to say that the effectiveness of the authority has been hampered by the London Mayor and his use of direction. He has repeatedly used direction to overturn the democratic decisions of the fire authority members. The power of direction was intended to be used only in exceptional circumstances; unfortunately, the Mayor has used it almost routinely. He has made more than a dozen formal directions, including to secure the biggest cuts to the London fire brigade in its 150 years, closing 10 fire stations, losing 552 firefighters’ posts and axing 14 fire engines. Alternative proposals would have meant that stations did not need to close, but despite nine out of 10 of those taking part in a public consultation being opposed to the closures, the Mayor prevailed.
The Mayor did not stop there. Fire authority members have a duty to sell former fire stations for the best consideration, but they were unable to sell them, for example, for key worker or social housing. I understand that the Mayor then intervened in the sales process, trying to sell former fire stations to the Education Funding Agency for free schools at lower than the market price. The Mayor’s involvement even politicised the process to recruit a replacement commissioner for the London fire brigade. Traditionally, there has been cross-party consensus on the approach to take, but now the whole recruitment process has been deferred until after the election this May, in effect creating a two-year hiatus. There are more examples, but the point is clear: Labour supports the clause and the abolition of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority because the Mayor has made the existing arrangements untenable through disregard of the views of other elected representatives.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 8 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 2
The London Fire Commissioner
Mike Penning
I beg to move amendment 27, in schedule 2, page 132, line 36, at end insert—
“In section 21 (disqualification from being the Mayor or an Assembly member) after subsection (1) insert—
‘(1A) Subsection (1)(a) does not prevent a person appointed under section 67(1)(b) as the Deputy Mayor for Fire, or appointed under section 67(1)(b) and designated as the Deputy Mayor for Fire, from being elected as or being an Assembly member.’”
This amendment has the effect that a person who is appointed or designated by the Mayor of London as the Deputy Mayor for Fire may be elected as, or may continue to be, a member of the London Assembly.
Mike Penning
These are technical amendments that are required to clarify certain details about the two new roles.
Amendments 27, 31 and 32 will ensure that the person appointed or designated a deputy mayor for fire may still be elected as a member of the London Assembly or continue to be a member, if already elected. Amendments 28 to 30 require that confirmation hearings, which apply to certain appointments by the Mayor of London, will apply to the deputy mayor for fire. Amendment 33 will amend the Localism Act 2011, and amendments 34 to 36 ensure that the London fire commissioner is required to consider reports and recommendations from the local auditor.
Amendment 27 agreed to.
Lyn Brown
I beg to move amendment 187, in schedule 2, page 132, line 39, at end insert—
“(2A) Amend section 38 (delegation) as follows—
(a) in subsection (2) (persons to whom functions exercisable by the Mayor may be delegated) after paragraph (db) insert—
‘(de) London Fire Commissioner;’.
(3) In subsection (7) (power to exercise delegated functions where no existing power to do so) after paragraph (bb) insert—
‘(bc) London Fire Commissioner,’.
(4) After subsection (8B) (further delegation, and Mayor’s power to continue to exercise delegated functions) insert—
‘(8C) An authorisation given by the Mayor under subsection (1) above to the London Fire Commissioner in relation to a function does not prevent the Mayor from exercising the function.’”.
This amendment would delegate the GLA’s general power to do anything which it considers will further the promotion of economic development and wealth creation, social development to the improvement of the environment in Greater London to the London Fire Commissioner. This is in line with the powers delegated to MOPAC.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 186, in schedule 2, page 139, line 21, after “Commissioner” insert—
“on all matters relevant to the London Fire Commissioner.”
This amendment would ensure that the fire and emergency planning committee would have the power to scrutinise the entire remit of the London Fire Commissioner.
Lyn Brown
Amendment 186 would expand the remit of the fire and emergency planning committee, which is the body that the Bill will create to scrutinise the performance of the London Mayor, the deputy mayor for fire and the London fire commissioner on fire matters. Amendment 187 would slightly expand the role of the London fire commissioner by giving him or her equivalent delegated powers over economic development and the environment to those held by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime.
I tabled amendment 186 because the Bill envisages a very narrow remit for the fire and emergency planning committee. Under the Government’s proposals, the committee will be able to look only at fire matters. That does not acknowledge the changing nature of the fire service in London, which, like brigades up and down the country, is increasingly playing a role in resilience and flooding issues as part of its day-to-day role. For example, we recently saw the London fire brigade take a lead on Exercise Unified Response, which brought together key stakeholders in the capital to test their ability to deal with a large-scale building collapse.
In the last month, the London fire brigade has launched a co-responding trial in four boroughs in the capital—Merton, Lambeth, Wandsworth and, happily, the amazing borough of Newham—as part of the national joint council’s workstream on the 21st-century firefighter. If the trial is a success, the new committee will want to scrutinise closer working with the ambulance service in London to promote accountability and good-quality service delivery.
Given the changing role of the fire service and the greater collaboration we are likely to see in the capital, we propose that the committee should be able to investigate and consider all matters relevant to the London fire commissioner. That would ensure that the London Assembly’s scrutiny was as robust as it could be and allow members of the committee to cover everything from prevention and community safety to closer working with the other emergency services and local authority partners.
The Government and the Opposition support greater collaboration between the emergency services. We need to ensure that where that collaboration takes place, there is not a gap in the scrutiny of our public services, with the various scrutiny bodies staring at each other and wondering whether the projects fall under their remit. I hope that the Minister will take this opportunity to clarify his plans on how we will deal with those situations, both in London and elsewhere in the country.
Amendment 187 would ensure that the London fire commissioner had the delegated powers he needs to use the fire service to help Londoners. Section 30 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 gives a general power to the GLA to do anything it considers will further any one or more of its principal purposes—namely,
“promoting economic development and wealth creation in Greater London; promoting social development in Greater London; and promoting the improvement of the environment in Greater London.”
The Mayor has the ability to delegate those powers to MOPAC, which is the equivalent office to the London fire commissioner, but for policing. That enables the police to engage in any work that they think is for the good of London.
Allowing the Mayor to delegate those powers to the London fire commissioner would mean that the London fire brigade could do the same. It is really important that we accept the amendment for two reasons, and I reckon that the Minister can find it in his heart to give Londoners what they want. First, all of us want to see all of our emergency services working together to serve their communities. That is the spirit behind the duty to collaborate, and it is the spirit behind this amendment. Secondly, it is important that we accept the amendment so as to formally recognise the parity of esteem that fire has with the police service, which is something I have tried to talk about this afternoon—I think I have managed to get Government Members to understand that that is what I am attempting to do.
There is no reason to think that the London fire brigade is not just as capable of finding innovative ways to serve and aid Londoners as the Metropolitan police. To do that, its commissioners require equivalent powers. I look forward with interest to what the Minister has to say, with great hope that he will accept our amendments.
Mike Penning
As always, the shadow Minister has put her amendments forward in good faith. In respect of amendment 187, however, I think that she is slightly misguided about the current powers. The London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority does not have the GLA’s general powers delegated to it, and nor does the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime. On that basis, I could not bring that across to the London fire commissioner, as I think she understands.
On amendment 186, under proposed new section 327I(3), which will be inserted into the Greater London Authority Act 1999 by schedule 2, the fire and emergency committee will be able to scrutinise any actions, decisions or matters relating to the functions of the London fire commissioner and any officer of the London fire commissioner. The powers are already in the legislation, and surely we do not need more legislation.
Lyn Brown
On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendments made: 28, in schedule 2, page 133, line 3, after “4” insert—
“( ) Section 60A (confirmation hearings etc for certain appointments by the Mayor) is amended as follows.”.
This amendment and amendments 29 and 30 ensure that the provisions for confirmation hearings in the Greater London Authority Act 1999 apply where a person is appointed as a member of the staff of the Greater London Authority by the Mayor of London and is later designated by the Mayor as the Deputy Mayor for Fire.
Amendment 29, in schedule 2, page 133, line 3, leave out from “In” to “applies” in line 4 and insert
“subsection (3) (offices to which section 60A”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 28.
Amendment 30, in schedule 2, page 133, line 11, at end insert—
“( ) After subsection (4) insert—
(4A) This section also applies in any case where the Mayor proposes to designate as the Deputy Mayor for Fire a person appointed under section 67(1)(b).
(4B) References in section 327H and Schedule 4A to appointment of a person as the Deputy Mayor for Fire (however expressed) include such a designation.”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 28.
Amendment 31, in schedule 2, page 133, line 21, leave out “(see section 327F)” and insert
“, or appointed under section 67(1)(b) and designated as the Deputy Mayor for Fire,”.
This amendment and amendment 32 ensure that a person who is appointed as a member of the staff of the Greater London Authority by the Mayor of London, and later designated by the Mayor as the Deputy Mayor for Fire, may be elected as a member of the London Assembly.
Amendment 32, in schedule 2, page 133, line 26, leave out from “Fire” to “from” in line 27 and insert
“, or
( ) a person appointed under section 67(1)(b) and designated as the Deputy Mayor for Fire,”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 31.
Amendment 111, in schedule 2, page 145, line 23, after “Commissioner” insert
“but only for the purposes of section 138B”.
This amendment has the effect that certain provisions of the Local Government Act 1972 about religious observance do not apply to the London Fire Commissioner, as they can only apply to a body which has meetings of its members.
Amendment 112, in schedule 2, page 148, line 37, at end insert—
“( ) for ‘, a combined authority established under section 103 of that Act’ substitute ‘and a combined authority established under section 103 of that Act’,”.
This amendment and amendments 113 to 116 replace the consequential amendments to insert references to the London Fire Commissioner into the Housing Associations Act 1985 with amendments to remove existing references to the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority from that Act. This is because the provisions to which the amendments relate apply only to Wales.
Amendment 113, in schedule 2, page 148, line 38, for “for” substitute “omit”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 112.
Amendment 114, in schedule 2, page 148, line 39, leave out “substitute ‘and the London Fire Commissioner’”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 112.
Amendment 115, in schedule 2, page 148, line 40, for “for” substitute “omit”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 112.
Amendment 116, in schedule 2, page 148, line 41, leave out “substitute ‘the London Fire Commissioner’”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 112.
Amendment 117, in schedule 2, page 149, line 38, at end insert—
“In section 1(9) (meaning of politically restricted post under a local authority) for ‘and every member of staff of a fire and rescue authority created by an order under section 4A of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004’ (as inserted by paragraph 12AN of Schedule1) substitute ‘every member of staff of a fire and rescue authority created by an order under section 4A of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 and every member of staff of the London Fire Commissioner’.”
This amendment brings staff of the London Fire Commissioner within the definition of persons holding a politically restricted post under a local authority in section 1 of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 for the purposes of the provisions on disqualification and political restriction in that section.
Amendment 118, in schedule 2, page 150, line 3, leave out from “after” to “insert” in line 4 and insert
“paragraph (aa) (as inserted by paragraph 12AO(2) of Schedule1)”.
This amendment and amendments 119 to 126 make modifications to the amendments to the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 in Schedule 2 to the Bill to take account of the amendments to that Act to be inserted into Schedule 1 by amendment 106.
Amendment 119, in schedule 2, page 150, line 7, leave out “(5)” and insert
“(5B) (as inserted by paragraph 12AO(3) of Schedule1)”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 118.
Amendment 120, in schedule 2, page 150, line 12, leave out first “an elected local policing body” and insert
“a fire and rescue authority created by an order under section 4A of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004’ (as inserted by paragraph 12AO(4) of Schedule1)”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 118.
Amendment 121, in schedule 2, page 150, line 12, leave out second “an elected local policing body” and insert
“a fire and rescue authority created by an order under section 4A of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 118.
Amendment 122, in schedule 2, page 150, line 16, leave out from “after” to “insert” in line 17 and insert
“paragraph (aa) (as inserted by paragraph 12AP(2) of Schedule1)”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 118.
Amendment 123, in schedule 2, page 150, line 20, leave out from “sub-paragraph” to “insert” in line 21 and insert
“(ia) (as inserted by paragraph 12AP(3) of Schedule1)”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 118.
Amendment 124, in schedule 2, page 150, line 26, leave out first “an elected local policing body” and insert
“a fire and rescue authority created by an order under section 4A of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004’ (as inserted by paragraph 12AP(4) of Schedule1)”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 118.
Amendment 125, in schedule 2, page 150, line 26, leave out second “an elected local policing body” and insert
“a fire and rescue authority created by an order under section 4A of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 118.
Amendment 126, in schedule 2, page 150, line 31, leave out “(1)” and insert
“(1B) (as inserted by paragraph 12AQ of Schedule1)”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 118.
Amendment 127, in schedule 2, page 150, line 39, at end insert “, and
( ) section 10 (limit on paid leave for local authority duties).”
This amendment applies the provisions on limits on paid leave for local authority duties in section 10 of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 to employees of the London Fire Commissioner.
Amendment 33, in schedule 2, page 153, line 32, leave out from “authority’)” to end of line 34 and insert
“omit paragraph (g) (the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority).”.
This amendment has the effect that a reference to the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority is removed from section 27 of the Localism Act 2011 rather than being replaced with a reference to the London Fire Commissioner. Section 27 concerns the conduct of members of a relevant authority, but as a corporation sole the London Fire Commissioner will not have members.
Amendment 34, in schedule 2, page 154, line 13, after “120” insert—
“(1) The Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 is amended as follows.”.
This amendment and amendments 35 and 36 apply paragraph 5(7) of Schedule 7 to the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 to the London Fire Commissioner. The effect is that the requirement to consider a report or recommendation of a local auditor at a meeting is replaced with a requirement for the Commissioner to consider the report or recommendation.
Amendment 35, in schedule 2, page 154, line 13, leave out
“of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 34.
Amendment 36, in schedule 2, page 154, line 16, at end insert—
“( ) In Schedule 7 (reports and recommendations by local auditor) in paragraph 5(7) (duty of certain authorities to consider report or recommendation) (as amended by paragraph 25 of Schedule 1) for ‘or a fire and rescue authority created by an order under section 4A of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004’ substitute ‘, a fire and rescue authority created by an order under section 4A of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 or the London Fire Commissioner’.”—(Mike Penning.)
See the explanatory statement for amendment 34.
Schedule 2, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 9 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 10
Local policing bodies: functions in relation to complaints
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Karen Bradley)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth, although it has taken quite some time today for me to have the chance to say that. I am delighted that the hon. Member for West Ham will now get a bit of a break, because she has been working exceptionally hard today.
For the benefit of the Committee, I propose to say a few words about part 2 of the Bill. I do not propose to make further comments on clause stand part, but I will of course address any comments about the amendments.
Karen Bradley
Mr Howarth, I propose to make a few comments now. I will not make further comments on clause stand part as we go on, because my comments will cover the generality of what we are doing. I will, however, address the amendments. I hope that is clear.
Karen Bradley
Thank you, Mr Howarth.
Almost three quarters of people who complain to the police are not satisfied with how their complaints are handled. The current arrangements are seen by the police and public alike as too complex, too adversarial, too drawn out and lacking in sufficient independence from the police.
The Bill will amend part 2 of the Police Reform Act 2002 to make the police complaints system more transparent and robust. It will give the police a new duty to resolve complaints in a reasonable and proportionate manner, while giving them greater flexibility in how they meet that duty. We will inject a greater level of independence into the system, strengthening PCCs’ oversight role and making them the appellate body for appeals that are currently heard by chief constables. PCCs will be able to take on responsibility for other aspects of the complaints handling process, including the recording of complaints and keeping complainants informed of the progress of their complaints.
The definition of a complaint will change. We are extending the definition of a complaint beyond conduct matters to make the system less about apportioning blame and more customer focused. We are retaining and clarifying the focus on immediate resolution of customer service-related complaints where appropriate.
We will enable the Independent Police Complaints Commission to initiate investigations more quickly, ensuring that crucial evidence is not lost and that the public perceive the IPCC as being responsive to events that may attract significant public attention. We will allow the IPCC to reinvestigate a complaint, recordable conduct matter, or death or serious injury matter if it is satisfied that there are compelling reasons to do so.
The Bill also provides for volunteers with policing powers to be captured under the police complaints and discipline systems. We are simplifying the decision-making process so that the IPCC will always make decisions about disciplinary proceedings following its investigations, which will speed up the process, and we are providing that the IPCC must lead independent investigations into certain matters that relate to the conduct of a chief officer or the deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 10 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 11
Definition of police complaint
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 160, in clause 11, page 13, line 27, at end insert—
“(d) a member of the civilian staff of a police force in relation to whom the conduct took place when in the capacity of a private citizen.”
This amendment is to allow police staff to make complaints to the IPCC in relation to police conduct which impacts on them when not at work and in their capacity as a private citizen.
First, may I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, the shadow fire Minister, for her epic efforts in holding the Government to account throughout what has been, at times, a lively debate?
We tabled the amendment following discussions with representatives of both the police service and Unison, the principal union that represents police support staff. It would allow police staff to make complaints to the IPCC when they are not at work—there is an existing procedure through which they must go—in their capacity as private citizens.
We seek an explanation from the Government as to why, when off duty, police staff who suffer a case of police misconduct should not be able to raise it with the IPCC. There could be a range of issues where they live, socialise and shop. Sadly, incidents sometimes take place and they should have the right to pursue a complaint and use the IPCC’s machinery.
Unlike police officers, police staff are not sworn into office, so they are not limited as police officers are in respect of activities such as political campaigning during their free time. That is reflected in officer pay and employment contracts for the police service. However, under the current provisions, police staff are essentially denied an opportunity that is freely provided to members of the public. It is our view that in accepting a job, a member of police staff should not have to sign away their right to make a complaint to the IPCC regarding a member of the force with which they take the job.
In conclusion, other than where there are legitimate restrictions, for example in respect of police officers and their existing contract of employment, we cannot see a reason why police staff should be so constrained, and we therefore very much hope that the Minister will move on the matter.
Karen Bradley
The shadow policing Minister knows that a number of levels of complaint can be made against police staff and servicing police officers, and the IPCC is there to investigate the most serious cases of wrongdoing—almost the final arbiter, one might say. The police complaints system should be there for members of the public who want to express dissatisfaction with their interaction with the police. The hon. Gentleman knows that there are existing provisions regarding recordable conduct matters and whistleblowing for when a person serving with the police needs to raise a conduct issue about someone else in their force. Every police force has a professional standards department, with strong powers to investigate wrongdoing. Officers and staff members can report concerns directly to those departments, most of which offer an anonymous online reporting system.
Jack Dromey
The Minister comprehensively catalogues the arrangements as they stand in respect of a member of police staff, their terms and conditions of employment, and their rights and responsibilities in the course of their employment, but we are talking about events outwith the course of their employment. Why should Joe or Josephine Soap, a member of police staff, be constrained in making complaints to the IPCC when there are grounds so do to?
Karen Bradley
I remember Joe and Josephine Soap from the Serious Crime Bill last year. I seem to recall that they featured prominently in many of our discussions.
The point I was coming on to is that the Bill significantly strengthens people’s ability to make complaints. For example, clause 21 provides the IPCC with a new power to initiate whistleblowing investigations when a concern is reported directly to it, without waiting for a referral from the police force. In cases where they cannot raise a complaint, members of police staff are explicitly covered by the new definition of a whistleblower.
It is important to repeat, however, that the IPCC cannot and should not handle all complaints at any level of seriousness raised by police staff in their capacity as private citizens. Its role is to investigate the most serious and sensitive cases. All other complaints, whether made by a member of the public or a member of police staff, should be handled by the force or a local policing body. Through the reforms, I want to see the IPCC be the best it can be at ensuring that those serious cases are dealt with. I do not want it to be distracted by issues, albeit important ones, that can be dealt with at a local force level, and I therefore hope that the hon. Gentleman will be minded to withdraw the amendment.
Jack Dromey
Briefly, the clause means that we have a category of citizen who works in support of the police but is denied the opportunity to make complaints about the police in their private life. That situation is deeply unsatisfactory, but we have had an exchange in which we have aired the issues.
Karen Bradley
I also make the point that the IPCC has a dedicated phone line and an email address for people serving with the police who wish to report something to it. What I am suggesting is that the IPCC should perhaps not take on cases that could be dealt with at police force level. We want the IPCC to deal with the most serious wrongdoings of the police.
Jack Dromey
I agree, but the problem remains that police staff in their private lives will not be able to make complaints like every other citizen is able to do. I regret that, but we have had an exchange on the issue and I very much hope that the Government will look at it again before Report. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 11 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 3
Amendments consequential on the amended definition of police complaint
Karen Bradley
I beg to move amendment 37, in schedule 3, page 154, line 32, at end insert—
“2A (1) Section 16 (payment for assistance with investigations) is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (2)(a)—
(a) before sub-paragraph (i) insert—
‘(ai) an investigation of a complaint where the complainant expressed dissatisfaction with the other force,’;
(b) in sub-paragraph (i), after ‘investigation’ insert ‘of a recordable conduct matter’.
(3) In subsection (2)(b)—
(a) before sub-paragraph (i) insert—
‘(ai) an investigation of a complaint where the complainant expressed dissatisfaction with a force other than that force,’;
(b) in sub-paragraph (i), after ‘investigation’ insert ‘of a recordable conduct matter’.”
This amendment is consequential on the changes to the definition of complaint in section 12 of the Police Reform Act 2002 that are made by clause 11 of the Bill.
Karen Bradley
I will not detain the Committee for long. These are additional consequential amendments to the 2002 Act to reflect the new definition of a complaint.
Amendment 37 agreed to.
Amendments made: 38, in schedule 3, page 155, line 5, after “force” insert
“with which dissatisfaction is expressed by the complainant”.
This amendment clarifies who the appropriate authority is in cases where a complaint under Part 2 of the Police Reform Act 2002 is not a complaint relating to the conduct of a person serving with the police (but rather some other expression of dissatisfaction with a police force).
Amendment 39, in schedule 3, page 155, leave out lines 12 and 13 and insert—
“(b) in a case where the complaint or purported complaint was made on behalf of someone else, to the person on whose behalf it was made;’.”
This amendment clarifies who the complainant is in cases where a complaint under Part 2 of the Police Reform Act 2002 is made on behalf of someone else.
Amendment 40, in schedule 3, page 155, line 14, leave out sub-paragraph (5).—(Karen Bradley.)
This amendment removes an amendment of section 29(4)(b) of the Police Reform Act 2002 which it has been concluded is no longer needed.
Schedule 3, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 12
Duty to keep complainant and other interested persons informed
Karen Bradley
I beg to move amendment 41, in clause 12, page 14, line 22, at end insert—
“(4A) The generality of subsection (4)(a) and (b) is not affected by any requirement to notify the complainant that is imposed by any other provision of this Part.’”
This amendment provides for the references to the progress and outcome of the handling of a complaint in new subsection (4) of section 20 of the Police Reform Act 2002, which is about keeping the complainant informed, to be unaffected by any specific requirements to notify the complainant imposed elsewhere in Part 2 of that Act.
Karen Bradley
Again, these are technical amendments. They will ensure that we consolidate the reform work as intended by streamlining and consolidating as far as possible the notification arrangements regarding a complaint.
Amendment 41 agreed to.
Amendments made: 42, in clause 12, page 14, line 26, leave out “(2) or (3)” and insert “(1) or (2)”.
This amendment corrects an incorrect cross-reference to provisions of section 20 of the Police Reform Act 2002.
Amendment 43, in clause 12, page 14, line 27, after “findings of” insert
“a report submitted under provision made by virtue of paragraph 20A(4)(b) of Schedule 3, or”.
This amendment reproduces the effect of paragraphs 20C(4) and 20F(4) of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002, which are repealed by Schedule 4 to the Bill.
Amendment 128, in clause 12, page 14, leave out lines 32 and 33 and insert—
“(b) section 21A.’”
This amendment is consequential on NC2.
Amendment 44, in clause 12, page 15, line 16, at end insert—
“(9A) The generality of subsection (9)(a) and (b) is not affected by any requirement to notify an interested person that is imposed by any other provision of this Part.’”
This amendment amends section 21 of the Police Reform Act 2002, which is about keeping interested persons informed, in the same way that amendment 41 amends section 20 of that Act in relation to complainants.
Amendment 45, in clause 12, page 15, line 18, leave out “or recordable conduct matter” and insert
“, recordable conduct matter or DSI matter”.
This amendment extends the provision in new subsection (11A) of section 21 of the Police Reform Act 2002, which is about the provision of copies of reports, to reports on an investigation of a DSI matter.
Amendment 46, in clause 12, page 15, line 21, after “findings of” insert
“a report submitted under provision made by virtue of paragraph 20A(4)(b) of Schedule 3, or”.
This amendment reproduces the effect of paragraphs 20C(4) and 20F(4) of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002, which are repealed by Schedule 4 to the Bill.
Amendment 47, in clause 12, page 15, line 22, after “22” insert “or 24A”.
This amendment is consequential on amendment 45.
Amendment 129, in clause 12, page 15, leave out lines 27 and 28 and insert—
“(b) section 21A.’”
This amendment is consequential on NC2.
Amendment 48, in clause 12, page 15, line 31, after “sub-paragraphs” insert “(4) and”.
This amendment provides for the repeal of a duty to notify certain persons of the bringing of criminal proceedings following a report on an investigation under Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002. It is intended that an equivalent notification will be required to be given under sections 20 and 21 of the 2002 Act, as amended by clause 12 of the Bill.
Amendment 49, in clause 12, page 15, line 34, after “sub-paragraphs” insert “(4) and”.
This amendment has the same effect as amendment 48—see the explanatory statement for that amendment.
Amendment 50, in clause 12, page 15, line 35, at end insert—
“( ) In consequence of the repeal made by subsection (9)(b), Schedule 3 is further amended as follows—
(a) in paragraph 24, after sub-paragraph (6A) (as inserted by Schedule4) insert—
‘(6B) It shall be the duty of the appropriate authority—
(a) to take the action which it determines under sub-paragraph (6) that it is required to, or will in its discretion, take, and
(b) in a case where that action consists of or includes the bringing of disciplinary proceedings, to secure that those proceedings, once brought, are proceeded with to a proper conclusion.’;
(b) in paragraph 27 (duties with respect to disciplinary proceedings etc)—
(i) in sub-paragraph (1), omit paragraph (a) (including the ‘or’ at the end);
(ii) in sub-paragraph (2)(a), omit ‘which has been or is required to be notified or, as the case may be,’.”—(Karen Bradley.)
This amendment is consequential on the repeal of paragraph 24(7) of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 and ensures that, despite that repeal, the appropriate authority remains subject to the same duty as is currently imposed by paragraph 27(2) of that Schedule.
The Chair
The Committee is rather ahead of the schedule for proceedings that I have in front of me, so we are winging it a bit.
Clause 12, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 13
Complaints, conduct matters and DSI matters: procedure
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to consider new clause 9—Proportionate protection for members of police forces who admit mistakes—
The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision for the Independent Police Complaints Commission to offer proportionate protection to members of police forces subject to an investigation or a complaint who are honest in admitting their mistakes.”
This new clause would ensure that where members of police forces are honest in admitting their mistakes, the Independent Police Complaints Commission gives them credit for that in subsequent investigations or complaints.
Jack Dromey
The amendment would ensure that, when members of police forces are honest in admitting their mistakes, the Independent Police Complaints Commission gives them credit for that in any subsequent investigations or complaints. The purpose of the amendment is to promote the importance of creating a learning rather than always a blame culture in the police. I will start with a rather unusual parallel.
I remember the first time I ever went to the Ford plant in Dagenham. There were 3,000 inspectors. Eventually, a “right first time” culture evolved, through team working and engaging the workforce. In particular, at the heart of that culture was the encouragement, “If you get it wrong, own up; if you can think of a better way for the job to be done, say so.” I think that that was absolutely right. Indeed, that culture of continuous improvement is at the centre of the success of the automotive industry, and we see it elsewhere in the private sector. As I will say in a moment, the Government are also proposing it for the public sector, so we must move towards a situation where members of police forces feel supported to speak out when mistakes happen. We therefore want to start a conversation with the Government about how they can take a proactive role in developing it.
The police are told in the police code of ethics that
“you must never ignore unethical or unprofessional behaviour by a policing colleague, irrespective of the person’s rank, grade or role… You will be supported if you report any valid concern over the behaviour of someone working in policing which…has fallen below the standards expected.”
However—this point pre-empts new clause 8—members of police forces have very little understanding of what, if any, protection is on offer. According to the Government’s consultation on the subject:
“Police officers feel unable to admit to a mistake without fear of being subject to disciplinary proceedings.”
We therefore want to build on what is already starting to happen in the police service, such as the good work of the College of Policing on learning from mistakes.
On where the police service is now, however, in evidence to the Committee, police leaders contrasted the police complaints system with the systems in the airline and nuclear industries, where a real effort has been made in the interests of public safety to develop a learning-based approach to accidents and mistakes. On the one hand, pilots are encouraged to report if they overshoot the white mark; and, on the other hand, the nuclear industry, with which I am very familiar—I dealt with British Nuclear Fuels and the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority for many years—has placed a huge emphasis on, “If you get it wrong or if you make a mistake, own up, because we need to learn from those mistakes if we are to ensure that we maintain the highest standards of safety.”
Indeed, it is interesting that the Secretary of State for Health has just announced his intention to encourage such a learning culture in the national health service to institute:
“An NHS that learns from mistakes.”
His recent statement to the House should inform the nature of our debate:
“In addition to greater and more intelligent transparency, a culture of learning means we need to create an environment in which clinicians feel able to speak up about mistakes. We will therefore bring forward measures for those who speak honestly to investigators from the healthcare safety investigation branch to have the kind of ‘safe space’ that applies to those speaking to the air accident investigation branch.”
That is precisely the parallel with airlines that I drew a moment ago. The statement continues:
“The General Medical Council and the Nursing and Midwifery Council have made it clear through their guidance that where doctors, nurses or midwives admit what has gone wrong and apologise, the professional tribunal should give them credit for that, just as failing to do so is likely to incur a serious sanction.”
The Secretary of State is saying, and rightly so, that medical professionals should be given credit for admitting mistakes, which of course does not defend anyone who has done something unacceptable that deserves disciplinary action, but in terms of the culture that he is trying to create, he rightly argues that credit should be given where people own up. The statement continues:
“The Government remain committed to legal reform that would allow professional regulators more flexibility to resolve cases without stressful tribunals.
NHS Improvement will ask for the commitment to learning to be reflected in all trust disciplinary procedures and ask all trusts to publish a charter for openness and transparency so staff can have clear expectations of how they will be treated if they witness clinical errors.” —[Official Report, 9 March 2016; Vol. 607, c. 17-18WS.]
It is not often that I praise the Secretary of State for Health, but he is absolutely right on the kind of culture that should apply in public services. I have seen it apply in the private sector. Of course it is early days following the announcement by the Secretary of State, and we do not know how successful the project will be at the next stages, but we very much hope that Police Ministers will take serious note of his political will to institute a culture of transparency and openness.
Finally, I draw a strong distinction between on the one hand serious matters that have to be properly pursued through the investigatory arrangements and on the other what happens in the world of work—in the public and private sectors—where mistakes are sometimes made. It is far better that those mistakes are owned up to and lessons are learned, rather than having a culture where people fear that if they own up, they might suffer as a consequence.
Karen Bradley
May I start by saying that I agree with the spirit of new clause 9? Police officers and police forces should be encouraged to honestly acknowledge their mistakes, and they should be commended for doing so with the aim of ensuring that they do not make the same mistake again. That is why the Bill introduces a range of reforms to simplify the complaints system and, importantly, to make it less adversarial. The Bill redefines a complaint as an “expression of dissatisfaction” against a police force, moving away from linking every complaint with an individual. It also provides forces with much greater discretion in how they can resolve complaints in a reasonable and proportionate manner, encouraging them to seek swift resolution with the complainant.
For allegations below the threshold of gross misconduct, regulations already provide for management, rather than disciplinary action, to be taken where appropriate, but our reforms will go further. We will bring forward regulations to integrate the recommendations of the independent Chapman review into the disciplinary system. That will refocus the system back on learning lessons, ensuring that necessary managerial interventions short of dismissal are focused on transformation.
None the less, we are clear that where a police officer commits an act of misconduct, the public and his or her fellow officers have a right to expect that that officer is held to account and that his or her actions are fully and transparently investigated. A blanket assurance that any police officer should always receive protection from facing the consequences of their actions will not achieve that. I hope that we would all agree, given the conversations we have in surgery appointments, that constituents want to see their complaints properly and fully investigated with full transparency. It is incredibly important that we deliver that.
It is not the role of the Independent Police Complaints Commission to determine protection for those who admit or apologise for committing misconduct. For the IPCC to consider an officer’s contrition would be inappropriate, not least as the IPCC only investigates the most serious and sensitive allegations. The IPCC must establish the facts of the complaint and other matters and then put forward an assessment of whether there is a case to answer. Following any investigation, an appropriate sanction taking into account any mitigating factors should rightly be considered by the force or, in cases of gross misconduct, by a disciplinary panel chaired by an independent qualified person. The College of Policing is developing benchmarking guidance for chairs of disciplinary panels to assist them in making judgments about mitigating and aggravating circumstances. That also implements a recommendation of the Chapman review.
Chief officers have an important role to play through their leadership, setting the organisational culture within their forces and supporting the learning and development of their officers and staff. We heard last week from Chief Superintendent Irene Curtis that there should be a
“sense of proportionality in how we deal with conduct issues in policing.”––[Official Report, Policing and Crime Public Bill Committee, 15 March 2016; c. 19, Q16.]
Our package of reforms will achieve that, without compromising the need to ensure that misconduct is dealt with fairly and robustly to maintain public confidence in the police. I therefore hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his amendment.
Jack Dromey
First, for the avoidance of doubt, we are absolutely not seeking a blanket exemption. Where police officers are guilty of misconduct and deserve disciplinary action, that action should be taken. We are focused on having a culture that is not a blame culture, but one of continuous improvement that improves how the police operate. The Minister gave a tantalising hint that regulations will be introduced in due course. If they are combined with the work being done by the College of Policing, I hope that we can move towards something that is more akin to what has been successful elsewhere and that commands the confidence of the police service. We will discuss it in more detail shortly, but that is the final point I want to make: the public want to have confidence in the complaints and disciplinary arrangements, but so, too, does the police service.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 13 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 4
Complaints, conduct matters and DSI matters: procedure
Amendments made: 51, in schedule 4, page 157, line 26, at end insert—
‘( ) In sub-paragraph (6)(b), for “a possible future investigation of the complaint” substitute “an investigation of the complaint (whether an existing investigation or a possible future one)”.”
This amendment amends paragraph 4(6)(b) of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 to cater for the possibility that there may be referred to the Commission a complaint that is already being investigated by an appropriate authority.
Amendment 52, in schedule 4, page 158, leave out lines 12 to 19 and insert—
“(2C) The appropriate authority must comply with its duty under sub-paragraph (2A) by making arrangements for the complaint to be investigated by the authority on its own behalf if at any time it appears to the authority from the complaint, or from the authority’s handling of the complaint to that point,”
This amendment is consequential on amendment 53.
Amendment 53, in schedule 4, page 158, leave out lines 27 to 33.
This amendment removes new sub-paragraph (2E) of paragraph 6 of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002. This provision is not needed. A complaint referred to the Commission which the Commission considers should be investigated will be dealt with in accordance with paragraph 15 of Schedule 3 to the 2002 Act.
Amendment 54, in schedule 4, page 158, line 35, leave out from “exceptions” to end of line 36
This amendment is consequential on amendment 53.
Amendment 55, in schedule 4, page 159, line 9, leave out sub-paragraph (2) and insert—
‘( ) After sub-paragraph (1) insert—
(1A) The Secretary of State may by regulations provide that the Commission must determine that it is necessary for complaints referred to it that relate to the conduct of a chief officer or the Deputy Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis to be investigated.
(1B) Regulations under sub-paragraph (1A) may provide that the duty on the Commission applies only in relation to complaints relating to the conduct of a chief officer or the Deputy Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis that are of a description specified in the regulations.
(1C) Regulations under sub-paragraph (1A) may also provide that, where the Commission is required by the regulations to determine that it is necessary for a complaint to be investigated, paragraph 15 is to apply in relation to the complaint as if sub-paragraphs (4)(a), (4A) and (5A)(b) were omitted.””
This amendment and amendment 57 have the effect that where the Secretary of State by regulations requires that there be an investigation of complaints referred to the Commission that relate to the conduct of a chief officer or the Deputy Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis (or specified descriptions of such complaints), the investigation need not take the form of an investigation by the Commission. The form of the investigation will be determined in accordance with paragraph 15 of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 but regulations may provide that the investigation is not to take the form of an investigation by the appropriate authority on its own behalf.
Amendment 56, in schedule 4, page 159, line 21, at end insert—
‘( ) In sub-paragraph (3)(b), for “a possible future investigation of the complaint” substitute “an investigation of the complaint (whether an existing investigation or a possible future one)”.”
This amendment amends paragraph 5(3) of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 to cater for the possibility that there may be referred back to the appropriate authority a complaint that is already being investigated by the authority.
Amendment 57, in schedule 4, page 159, line 22, leave out sub-paragraph (4)
See explanatory statement for amendment 55.
Amendment 58, in schedule 4, page 159, line 33, at end insert—
11A In paragraph 13 (reference of conduct matters to the Commission), in sub-paragraph (6)(b), for “a possible future investigation of that matter” substitute “an investigation of that matter (whether an existing investigation or a possible future one)”.”
This amendment amends paragraph 13(6)(b) of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 to cater for the possibility that there may be referred to the Commission a conduct matter that is already being investigated by an appropriate authority.
Amendment 59, in schedule 4, page 159, line 36, leave out sub-paragraph (2) and insert—
‘( ) After sub-paragraph (1) insert—
(1A) The Secretary of State may by regulations provide that the Commission must determine that it is necessary for recordable conduct matters referred to it that relate to the conduct of a chief officer or the Deputy Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis to be investigated.
(1B) Regulations under sub-paragraph (1A) may provide that the duty on the Commission applies only in relation to recordable conduct matters relating to the conduct of a chief officer or the Deputy Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis that are of a description specified in the regulations.
(1C) Regulations under sub-paragraph (1A) may also provide that, where the Commission is required by the regulations to determine that it is necessary for a recordable conduct matter to be investigated, paragraph 15 is to apply in relation to the matter as if sub-paragraphs (4)(a), (4A) and (5A)(b) were omitted.””
This amendment and amendment 61 have the same effect as amendments 55 and 57 but in relation to recordable conduct matters rather than complaints.
Amendment 60, in schedule 4, page 160, line 5, at end insert—
‘( ) In sub-paragraph (3)(b), for “a possible future investigation of that matter” substitute “an investigation of that matter (whether an existing investigation or a possible future one)”.”
This amendment amends paragraph 14(3) of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 to cater for the possibility that there may be referred back to the appropriate authority a recordable conduct matter that is already being investigated by the authority.
Amendment 61, in schedule 4, page 160, line 6, leave out sub-paragraph (4)
See explanatory statement for amendment 59.
Amendment 62, in schedule 4, page 160, line 19, leave out sub-paragraph (2) and insert—
‘( ) After sub-paragraph (1) insert—
(1A) The Secretary of State may by regulations provide that the Commission must determine that it is necessary for DSI matters referred to it in relation to which the relevant officer is a chief officer or the Deputy Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis to be investigated.
(1B) Regulations under sub-paragraph (1A) may provide that the duty on the Commission applies only in relation to DSI matters in relation to which the relevant officer is a chief officer or the Deputy Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis that are of a description specified in the regulations.
(1C) Regulations under sub-paragraph (1A) may also provide that, where the Commission is required by the regulations to determine that it is necessary for a DSI matter to be investigated, paragraph 15 is to apply in relation to the matter as if sub-paragraphs (4)(a), (4A) and (5A)(b) were omitted.””
This amendment and amendment 63 have the same effect as amendments 55 and 57 but in relation to DSI matters rather than complaints.
Amendment 63, in schedule 4, page 160, line 32, leave out sub-paragraph (4)
See explanatory statement for amendment 62.
Amendment 64, in schedule 4, page 161, line 28, after “determines” insert “under sub-paragraph (4C) or (5B)”
This amendment clarifies under which provisions of paragraph 15 of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 a determination that an investigation is to take the form of an investigation by the appropriate authority under the direction of the Commission could be made.
Amendment 65, in schedule 4, page 161, line 31, leave out from “whether” to end of line 37 and insert “that form of investigation continues to be the most appropriate form of investigation.
“(5A) If, on such a review, the Commission determines that—
(a) it would be more appropriate for the investigation to take the form of an investigation by the Commission, the Commission must make a further determination under this paragraph (to replace the earlier one) that the investigation is instead to take that form;
(b) having regard to the seriousness of the case and the public interest, it would be more appropriate for the investigation to take the form of an investigation by the appropriate authority on its own behalf, the Commission may make a further determination under this paragraph (to replace the earlier one) that the investigation is instead to take that form.”
This amendment will enable an investigation under Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 that takes the form of an investigation by the appropriate authority under the direction of the Commission to be changed by the Commission into an investigation by the appropriate authority on its own behalf. This is in addition to the duty (in particular circumstances) to change the form of the investigation to an investigation by the Commission which is currently provided for in the Bill.
Amendment 66, in schedule 4, page 162, line 9, at end insert—
(c) the person to whose conduct the investigation will relate.”
This amendment adds the person to whose conduct the investigation will relate to the list of persons who must be notified of a determination of the form of an investigation made under paragraph 15 of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002.
Amendment 67, in schedule 4, page 163, line 34, leave out second “the” and insert “a”
This amendment, and amendments 68, 69 and 70, clarify the process for appointing, and replacing, an investigator of a directed investigation under paragraph 18 of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 in cases where the investigation relates to the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis or the Deputy Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis.
Amendment 68, in schedule 4, page 163, line 36, at end insert “(and approved for appointment in accordance with sub-paragraph (2A) (if required) or (2D)(a))”
See explanatory statement for amendment 67.
Amendment 69, in schedule 4, page 163, line 44, leave out second “the” and insert “a”
See explanatory statement for amendment 67.
Amendment 70, in schedule 4, page 163, line 46, at end insert “(and approved for appointment in accordance with sub-paragraph (2A) (if required) or (2D)(a))”
See explanatory statement for amendment 67.
Amendment 71, in schedule 4, page 164, line 7, leave out sub-paragraph (2).
This amendment is consequential on amendments 55, 57, 59, 61, 62 and 63.
Amendment 72, in schedule 4, page 166, line 47, at end insert “and
(i) the other matters (if any) dealt with in the report (but not on whether the conditions in sub-paragraphs (2A) and (2B) are satisfied in respect of the report),”
This amendment requires the Commission, under paragraph 23 of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002, to seek the views of the appropriate authority on matters dealt with in a report in addition to the matters described in new sub-paragraph (5A)(a)(i) and (ii).
Amendment 73, in schedule 4, page 167, line 10, leave out from “as to” to end of line 13 and insert “any matter dealt with in the report, being a determination other than one that it is required to make under sub-paragraph (2)(b) or paragraph (b) of this sub-paragraph,”
This amendment seeks to clarify the type of determination that the Commission will be able to make under paragraph 23(5A)(c) of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002.
Amendment 74, in schedule 4, page 167, line 44, at end insert—
25A In paragraph 24 (action by the appropriate authority in response to an investigation report under paragraph 22), after sub-paragraph (6) insert—
(6A) Where the report is a report of an investigation of a complaint and the appropriate authority is a local policing body, the appropriate authority may also, on receipt of the report, make a recommendation under paragraph 28ZA.””
This amendment enables a local policing body, when it is the appropriate authority considering a report of an investigation of a complaint under paragraph 24 of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002, to make a recommendation, with a view to remedying the complainant’s dissatisfaction, under new paragraph 28ZA of that Schedule (as inserted by paragraph 41 of Schedule 4 to the Bill).
Amendment 75, in schedule 4, page 167, line 48, leave out from “as to” to end of line 2 on page 168 and insert “any matter dealt with in the report, being a determination other than one that it is required to make under sub-paragraph (4) or that the appropriate authority may be required to make by virtue of paragraph 24C(3).”
This amendment seeks to clarify the type of determination that the Commission will be able to make under paragraph 24A(5) of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002.
Amendment 76, in schedule 4, page 169, line 4, at end insert—
“( ) The Secretary of State may by regulations make further provision about recommendations under sub-paragraph (6)(a) or (b).
( ) The regulations may (amongst other things) authorise the local policing body making the recommendation to require a response to the recommendation.”
This amendment confers power on the Secretary of State to make provision by regulations about recommendations made by local policing bodies on a review of the outcome of a complaint under new paragraph 6A of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 (review where no investigation).
Amendment 77, in schedule 4, page 169, line 6, after “paragraph” insert “and of its reasons for the determination made under sub-paragraph (4)”
This amendment requires a relevant review body, on a review of the outcome of a complaint under new paragraph 6A of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 (review where no investigation), to notify certain persons of its reasons for determining whether the outcome of the complaint is a reasonable and proportionate outcome (as well as notifying them of the outcome of the review).
Amendment 78, in schedule 4, page 170, leave out lines 14 and 15 and insert—
(a) make its own findings (in place of, or in addition to, findings of the investigation);”
This amendment seeks to clarify that findings of the Commission made on a review under paragraph 25 of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 may be replacement findings or additional findings.
Amendment 79, in schedule 4, page 170, leave out lines 41 to 43 and insert—
(b) sub-paragraphs (4) to (8) and (9)(b) of paragraph 27 apply in relation to the recommendation as if it had been made under that paragraph.”
This amendment is consequential on the repeal of paragraph 28 of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 by amendment 95. See also the explanatory statement to amendment 82.
Amendment 80, in schedule 4, page 171, line 46, at end insert—
“( ) The Secretary of State may by regulations make further provision about recommendations under sub-paragraph (4E)(a), (b) or (c) or (4G)(b).
( ) The regulations may (amongst other things) authorise the local policing body making the recommendation to require a response to the recommendation.”
This amendment confers power on the Secretary of State to make provision by regulations about recommendations made by local policing bodies on a review of the outcome of a complaint under paragraph 25 of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 (review following an investigation).
Amendment 81, in schedule 4, page 172, line 7, at end insert—
( ) after “paragraph” insert “and of its reasons for the determination made under sub-paragraph (4A)”;”
This amendment requires a relevant review body, on a review of the outcome of a complaint under paragraph 25 of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 (review following an investigation), to notify certain persons of its reasons for determining whether the outcome of the complaint is a reasonable and proportionate outcome (as well as notifying them of the outcome of the review).
Amendment 82, in schedule 4, page 172, line 27, at end insert—
32A After paragraph 25 insert—
“Information for complainant about disciplinary recommendations
25A (1) This paragraph applies where, on the review of the outcome of a complaint under paragraph 25, the Commission makes a recommendation under sub-paragraph (4C)(c) of that paragraph.
(2) Where the appropriate authority notifies the Commission under paragraph 25(4D)(a) that the recommendation has been accepted, the Commission must notify the complainant and every person entitled to be kept properly informed in relation to the complaint under section 21 of that fact and of the steps that have been, or are to be taken, by the appropriate authority to give effect to it.
(3) Where the appropriate authority—
(a) notifies the Commission under paragraph 25(4D)(a) that it does not (either in whole or in part) accept the recommendation, or
(b) fails to take steps to give full effect to the recommendation,
the Commission must determine what, if any, further steps to take under paragraph 27 as applied by paragraph 25(4D)(b).
(4) The Commission must notify the complainant and every person entitled to be kept properly informed in relation to the complaint under section 21—
(a) of any determination under sub-paragraph (3) not to take further steps, and
(b) where the Commission determines under that sub-paragraph that it will take further steps, of the outcome of the taking of those steps.””
Sub-paragraph (4D)(b) of paragraph 25 of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 (as inserted by the Bill) can no longer apply paragraph 28 of that Schedule (see the explanatory statement to amendment 95). The new paragraph 25A inserted into Schedule 3 to the 2002 Act by this amendment reproduces the effect that applying paragraph 28 would have had.
Amendment 83, in schedule 4, page 173, line 2, at end insert—
‘( ) For sub-paragraph (5) substitute—
(5) The Commission shall notify the appropriate authority of any determination that it makes under this paragraph and of its reasons for making the determination.
(5A) The Commission shall also notify the following of any determination that it makes under this paragraph and of its reasons for making the determination—
(a) the complainant;
(b) every person entitled to be kept properly informed in relation to the complaint under section 21;
(c) the person complained against (if any).
(5B) The duty imposed by sub-paragraph (5A) on the Commission shall have effect subject to such exceptions as may be provided for by regulations made by the Secretary of State.
(5C) Subsections (6) to (8) of section 20 apply for the purposes of sub-paragraph (5B) as they apply for the purposes of that section.””
This amendment requires the Commission, when it determines under paragraph 26 of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 what form a re-investigation following a review should take, to notify certain persons of the reasons for the determination (as well as notifying them of the determination itself). It also makes notification of everyone except the appropriate authority subject to exceptions provided for in regulations.
Amendment 84, in schedule 4, page 174, line 20, leave out “6A or”
This amendment has the effect that section 15(4) of the Police Reform Act 2002 will only be extended by the Bill to apply in cases where the Commission is carrying out a review, following an investigation, under paragraph 25 of Schedule 3 to that Act (and not where it is carrying out a review under paragraph 6A of that Schedule where there has not been an investigation).
Amendment 85, in schedule 4, page 174, line 34, at end insert—
39A In section 16 of the Police Reform Act 2002 (payment for assistance with investigations)—
(a) in subsection (1)(b), for “in such a connection to the Commission.” substitute “to the Commission in connection with an investigation under this Part or a review under paragraph 25 of Schedule 3.”;
(b) in subsection (2)(b)—
(i) in the words before sub-paragraph (i), for “in such a connection by a police force (“the assisting force”) to the Commission” substitute “by a police force (“the assisting force”) to the Commission in connection with an investigation under this Part or a review under paragraph 25 of Schedule 3”;
(ii) omit the “or” at the end of sub-paragraph (i);
(iii) after sub-paragraph (ii) insert “, or
This amendment is consequential on the amendments of section 15 of the Police Reform Act 2002 at paragraph 39 of Schedule 4 to the Bill.
Amendment 86, in schedule 4, page 174, line 38, leave out “6A or”
This amendment has the effect that section 18(1) of the Police Reform Act 2002 will only be extended by the Bill to apply in cases where the Commission is carrying out a review, following an investigation, under paragraph 25 of Schedule 3 to that Act (and not where it is carrying out a review under paragraph 6A of that Schedule where there has not been an investigation).
Amendment 87, in schedule 4, page 175, line 4, after “23” insert “, 24”
This amendment is consequential on the insertion of new sub-paragraph (6A) into paragraph 24 of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 by amendment 74.
Amendment 88, in schedule 4, page 175, line 17, after “23(5F)” insert “or 24(6A)”
This amendment is consequential on the insertion of new sub-paragraph (6A) into paragraph 24 of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 by amendment 74.
Amendment 89, in schedule 4, page 175, line 19, leave out “(3) or (5)”
This amendment is consequential on the insertion of new sub-paragraph (6A) into paragraph 24 of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 by amendment 74.
Amendment 90, in schedule 4, page 175, line 37, leave out from “2002,” to end of line 39 and insert “after sub-paragraph (3) insert—
“(3A) Where this paragraph applies—
(a) by virtue of sub-paragraph (1)(a) or (b) and the report is a report of an investigation of a complaint, or
(b) by virtue of sub-paragraph (2),
a recommendation made under sub-paragraph (3) may not be a recommendation of a kind described in regulations made under paragraph 28ZA(1).””
This amendment is in place of the amendment of paragraph 28A(3) of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 that is currently in the Bill. It takes account of the fact that paragraph 28A is capable of applying in cases where new paragraph 28ZA of that Schedule does not apply.
Amendment 91, in schedule 4, page 175, line 42, at end insert—
( ) in section 15—
(i) in subsection (3)(a), omit “, 17”;
(ii) in subsection (5), in the words after paragraph (c), omit “, 17”;”
This amendment is consequential on the repeal of paragraph 17 of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 made by paragraph 16 of Schedule 4 to the Bill.
Amendment 92, in schedule 4, page 176, line 31, leave out sub-paragraph (iv)
This amendment removes amendments of paragraph 21 of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 because that paragraph is repealed by paragraph 23 of Schedule 4 to the Bill.
Amendment 93, in schedule 4, page 176, line 34, at end insert—in paragraph 21A(6)(a), for “15(5)” substitute “15(5A) or (5B)”;”
(i) in paragraph 21A(6)(a), for “15(5)” substitute “15(5A) or (5B)”;”
This amendment is consequential on the amendments of paragraph 15 of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 made by paragraph 14 of Schedule 4 to the Bill.
Amendment 94, in schedule 4, page 176, line 47, at end insert—in paragraph 24B(3)(a), for “15(5)” substitute “15(5A) or (5B)”;”
(i) in paragraph 24B(3)(a), for “15(5)” substitute “15(5A) or (5B)”;”
This amendment is consequential on the amendments of paragraph 15 of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 made by paragraph 14 of Schedule 4 to the Bill.
Amendment 95, in schedule 4, page 177, line 2, at end insert—omit paragraph 28;”
(i) omit paragraph 28;” .—(Karen Bradley.)
Given the repeal of paragraph 27(1)(b) of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002, paragraph 28 of that Schedule (information for complainant about disciplinary recommendations) is no longer needed. This is because paragraph 27 recommendations will now only be capable of being made in the case of an investigation of a DSI matter.
Schedule 4, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 14
Initiation of investigation by IPCC
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 1—Initiation of investigations by IPCC.
Karen Bradley
Under the Police Reform Act 2002, the Independent Police Complaints Commission has powers to require the police to refer complaints or recordable conduct matters to it. It can also require forces to refer incidents in which there has been a death or serious injury following police contact. However, it must wait until the force complies with its referral request before it can consider the next steps, which include starting an investigation. Occasionally, there might be disagreement between the IPCC and a force—for example, over the severity of the matter or which force should have to record and refer it. That causes unnecessary delay that can serve only to undermine public confidence in the system, causing the IPCC to be seen as unresponsive and too reliant on the bodies it oversees.
Our intention has always been to ensure that, like several other ombudsman organisations, the IPCC has the ability to initiate investigations into matters that come to its attention. Clause 14 would achieve that by allowing the IPCC to request a referral, as it now can, and subsequently treating that matter as having been referred, either when the force complies with the request or after a certain time period expires. Although that would enable the IPCC to initiate investigations more quickly in the absence of a referral, the requirement for a minimum time period to elapse before the IPCC can initiate its investigations could still cause delay at the beginning of the investigation. Also, clause 14 would not fully address the perception that the IPCC is reliant on the police to permit it to begin its investigations. Although it would go a long way towards remedying the problem, on reflection we want to replace it with an even stronger power.
New clause 1 will provide the IPCC with an unambiguous power of initiative. It will enable the IPCC to treat a complaint, conduct matter or DSI—death or serious injury—matter that comes to its attention as having been referred to it immediately. If the IPCC chooses to treat the matter as such, it will then notify the force, which must record it if it has not been recorded already. As the public would expect, the IPCC will not be reliant on the forces it oversees to refer matters, and it will be able to take swift action to decide whether an investigation should take place and, if necessary, commence that investigation. I therefore commend new clause 1 to the Committee and propose that clause 14 should not stand part of the Bill.
Jack Dromey
I agree substantially with what the Minister has said. These are sensible arrangements designed to make investigations quicker and more effective, which is in everyone’s interests, in respect of both the police service and the public, not least because time and again we hear complaints from the public and the police that they drag on forever. We are content with the proposals.
Question put and negatived.
Clause 14 disagreed to.
Clause 15
IPCC power to require re-investigation
Amendments made: 97, in clause 15, page 19, line 27, at end insert “, in which case the Commission must determine that the re-investigation is to take the form described in that subsection”.
This amendment is consequential on amendment 99.
Amendment 98, in clause 15, page 19, line 31, leave out from first “Commission” to end of line 32.
This amendment is consequential on amendment 97.
Amendment 99, in clause 15, page 19, line 32, at end insert—
“(4A) Where—
(a) the Commission determines under subsection (3) or (6) that a re-investigation is to take the form of an investigation by the Commission, and
(b) at any time after that the Commission determines that subsection (4) applies in relation to the re-investigation,
the Commission may make a further determination under this section (to replace the earlier one) that the re-investigation is instead to take the form of an investigation by the appropriate authority under the direction of the Commission.”
This amendment will enable a re-investigation that takes the form of an investigation by the Commission to become instead an investigation by the appropriate authority under the direction of the Commission.
Amendment 100, in clause 15, page 19, line 33, after “determines” insert “under subsection (3) or (4A)”.
This amendment is consequential on amendment 99.
Amendment 101, in clause 15, page 19, line 44, after “subsection” insert “(4A) or”.
This amendment is consequential on amendment 99.
Amendment 102, in clause 15, page 19, line 45, after “(5A)” insert “or (5B)”.—(Karen Bradley.)
This amendment takes account of the fact that further determinations under paragraph 15 of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 may be made under sub-paragraph (5A) or (5B) of that paragraph (see paragraph 14 of Schedule 4 to the Bill).
Clause 15, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 16 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 17
Delegation of functions by local policing bodies
Karen Bradley
I beg to move amendment 130, in clause 17, page 22, line 4, at end insert—
“(4) In section 107 of the Local Government Act 1972 (application of sections 101 to 106 of that Act to the Common Council)—
(a) in subsection (2), omit the words from the beginning to “and” in the first place it occurs;
(b) after subsection (2) insert—
“(2A) The Common Council may not, under section 101(1)(a), arrange for any person to exercise a function that the Common Council has under or by virtue of Part 2 of the Police Reform Act 2002 (see instead section 23(2)(pa) of that Act and regulations made under that provision).””.
This amendment makes equivalent provision in relation to the Common Council as that made in relation to police and crime commissioners and the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime by clause 17(2) and (3) of the Bill. It is consequential on the new regulation-making power at section 23(2)(pa) of the Police Reform Act 2002 inserted by clause 17(1).
This is a technical amendment.
Amendment 130 agreed to.
Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 8—Review of the police complaints system—
“(1) Within two months of this Act coming into force, the Secretary of State shall commission an independent evaluation of the police complaints system.
(2) The evaluation must consider the—
(a) efficiency of the complaints system,
(b) clarity of the complaints process, and
(c) fairness of investigations.
(3) The Secretary of State shall lay the report of the evaluation before each House of Parliament by 1 January 2018.”
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to commission a comprehensive review of all aspects of the police complaints system.
Jack Dromey
I remember saying in a debate on the Floor of the House that I bow to no one in my admiration for the British police service and for the British model of policing, which is celebrated worldwide. Of course it is right that we constantly seek to raise standards in the police service and that we seek to hold the police to the highest standards. To this end, the work of the IPCC is crucial. It was established originally to ensure both independence and confidence, but it has not fulfilled its historic purpose. To be blunt, there is a widespread perception that the IPCC has been a failing body. Indeed, reference was made earlier to three quarters of those surveyed expressing dissatisfaction with how their complaint had been processed.
In the last Parliament, the Government took some steps, including throwing additional money at the IPCC by way of top-slicing the police service. It was clear from the evidence that the Committee heard last week that there remains, in the words of one of the police witnesses, a crisis of confidence in the IPCC. Indeed, Dame Anne Owers, an outstanding public servant, was refreshingly candid when she said that a view had been expressed that one might start with a blank sheet of paper.
The Bill does not start with a blank sheet of paper; it seeks to rename and rebadge the IPCC. Let me make it clear that the Government have proposed some welcome measures. We support, in particular, the efforts to make the system easier to understand and the widening of the definition of complaint under clause 11. We support the requirement under clause 13 for all complaints to be recorded. We strongly support the introduction of the super-complaints system under clauses 18 to 20, so that harmful trends, patterns and habits in policing can be identified and groups of people adversely affected can join forces to address such institutional issues.
We also support the duty under clause 12 to keep complainants and other interested persons updated on the progress of the handling of their complaint. That is crucial for public confidence. All of us, as Members of Parliament, will have had cases where people have made complaints but have not heard about the outcome or, indeed, where the investigation has reached.
If, in the previous Parliament, a noble concept did not work in the way in which it should have done, we cannot allow that to continue in another Parliament. It is too important to the public and the police that we have an investigation machinery that works and has confidence. The purpose behind the new clause is to seek an independent evaluation of the efficiency of the complaints system, the clarity of the complaints process and the fairness of investigations for both the public and the police. We therefore hope that the Government, in seeking to improve the current arrangements, will agree that there should be an independent evaluation of the new arrangements as they take root. I stress again that we do not want to have another five years like the last five years, when fundamental problems were not properly addressed.
Karen Bradley
The reforms set out in the Bill will overhaul the complaints system to ensure that complaints made against the police are responded to in a way that restores trust and builds public confidence. They are the product of extensive consultation over two or more years and will result in a more simple, flexible and independent complaints system.
Of course, we will want to evaluate the success of the reforms, but there are already a number of ways in which that evaluation will happen. Section 10 of the Police Reform Act 2002 includes a duty on the IPCC to maintain and review the arrangements for the handling of complaints and enables the IPCC to recommend change if necessary. Clause 26 of the Bill will extend HMIC’s remit to include any person involved in the delivery of policing functions, including PCC staff and other organisations. That means that HMIC has the ability to inspect and evaluate all aspects of the police complaints system. In the normal way, there will be a post-legislative review of this legislation three to five years after Royal Assent. The Home Office will submit a memorandum to the Home Affairs Committee, which will then decide whether it wishes to conduct a fuller post-legislative inquiry into the Act.
An early review of the complaints system, commencing within two months of the Act coming into force, would therefore not accurately reflect the impact of the reformed police complaints system. In short, I believe that there are already adequate mechanisms in place to review the effect of legislation without the need for an expensive independent evaluation of the kind envisaged by the new clause.
Jack Dromey
I am not impressed, with the greatest of respect, at the IPCC looking at the IPCC, but the Minister made the point that there is a mechanism involving HMIC, and that is welcome. She also says that there will be a review. The thrust of what we are arguing for is not that there is a review within two months, but that within two months a timetable and a process are laid out as to how the review will be conducted. We will hold the Government to that at the next stages, because it is important that this time we get it right.
Clause 17, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
The Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury (Charlie Elphicke)
We have made excellent progress today and enjoyed the amazing oratory of the hon. Member for West Ham. With the rest of the Committee now desiring a rest, I suggest that the Committee now adjourn.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.— (Charlie Elphicke.)
Policing and Crime Bill (Third sitting)
(8 years, 9 months ago)
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The Committee divided: - Ayes: 8 / Noes: 6 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Chair
We now begin line-by-line consideration of the Bill. Before we begin, I repeat that Members may, if they wish, remove their jackets during Committee meetings. Would everyone ensure that all electronic devices are turned off or switched to silent mode?
The selection list for today’s sitting is available in the room and shows how the selected amendments have been grouped. Amendments grouped together are generally on the same or similar issues. The Member who has put their name to the lead amendment in a group is called first. Other Members are free to catch my eye to speak on all or any of the amendments in that group. A Member may speak more than once in a debate. I will work on the assumption that the Minister wishes the Committee to reach a decision on all Government amendments.
Members should note that decisions on amendments take place not in the order in which the amendments are debated but in the order in which they appear on the amendment paper. In other words, debate occurs according to the selection list, and decisions are taken when we come to the clause that the amendment affects. I hope that that explanation is helpful. I will use my discretion to decide whether to allow a separate stand part debate on individual clauses and schedules following debates on the relevant amendments.
The Minister for Policing, Fire, Criminal Justice and Victims (Mike Penning)
On a point of order, Mr Howarth. I am sure colleagues are aware that there is an ongoing terrorist incident in Brussels, and I would like to put on record that our thoughts and prayers are with not only the victims but the emergency services, which yet again will be going in the opposite direction to everybody else. I am sure that Her Majesty’s Government are giving all assistance possible to the services in Belgium and the rest of Europe. It is important to put that on the record, as we are debating such an important Bill on the emergency services.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Mr Howarth. May I strongly support what the Policing Minister said? We stand united in opposition to terrorists, whether in our country or on the continent of Europe. We are facing a uniquely awful threat, and the last thing we should be is divided. We are not divided; we are united. I am with the Minister in giving 101% support to the emergency services and the police, which are at the sharp end in what must be the most difficult of circumstances.
The Chair
I am sure the whole Committee would want to be associated with the remarks of the Government and the Opposition on this appalling tragedy.
Clause 1
Collaboration agreements
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 163, in clause 1, page 2, line 10, leave out “(a) an ambulance trust in England” and insert—
“(a) an NHS body in England,
(aa) a public health body in England.”
This amendment would extend the duty of collaboration on to all NHS and public health bodies, and not just the ambulance service.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 166, in clause 1, page 2, line 12, at end insert—
“(d) a local authority in England.”
This amendment would extend the duty of collaboration to local authorities in England.
Amendment 164, in clause 5, page 5, line 2, leave out “(a) an ambulance trust in England” and insert—
“(a) an NHS Body in England,
(aa) a public health body in England.”
This amendment is consequential to amendment 163.
Amendment 165, in clause 5, page 5, line 5, leave out subsection (4) and insert—
“(4) “NHS body” means anything defined as an NHS body by the National Health Services Act 2006.
(4A) “Public health body” means—
(a) Public Health England, or
(b) any NHS body or local authority carrying out public health functions.”
This amendment is consequential to amendment 163.
Amendment 167, in clause 5, page 5, line 15, at end insert—
“(5A) “Local Authority in England” means—
(a) a district council,
(b) a county council,
(c) a county borough council,
(d) a London borough council,
(e) the Greater London Authority,
(f) the Common Council of the City of London, or
(g) the Council of the Isles of Scilly.”
This amendment is consequential to amendment 166.
Lyn Brown
I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. The amendments would place the duty to collaborate on all NHS and public health bodies, not just NHS ambulance trusts. They would increase the scope of collaboration agreements to include local authorities. We have tabled these amendments in recognition of the fact that much of the work undertaken by the fire service and, indeed, the police service has a much broader health and social impact than just the immediate emergency response. That needs to be recognised in the Bill.
I have no doubt that NHS ambulance trusts can and do benefit from collaborating with the police force and the fire service. In many parts of the country, the fire service plays a really important role in the first response to medical incidents. In Cornwall, the fire and rescue service works with the South Western Ambulance Service to respond to medical incidents when it can get to a location first. Firefighters have received medical training and know how to use defibrillators and carry out oxygen therapy. As we are all aware, Cornwall is a rural county with many isolated communities, which is why that sort of work is so important there. In fact, over the past three years, firefighter co-responders have made a total of 1,848 life-saving interventions, which is impressive.
Cornwall is far from alone in that activity. I have been to Lincolnshire and heard about the life-saving work of its co-responding scheme. Lincolnshire is another sprawling county with isolated communities, some of which lie close to fire stations—or rather, they are closer to fire stations than ambulance stations. I was told that the most common shout or call-out was to road traffic accidents in country lanes. Similar collaborative projects are going on up and down the country.
In addition, the fire and rescue service is playing an ever more important role in medical incidents. This support is particularly important in rural and semi-rural areas, where it is difficult to provide a comprehensive and rapid response service. The Somerset fire and rescue service attended 3,525 co- and first-responding incidents in 2012-13, equivalent to 41% of its road traffic collisions and special service calls.
English fire and rescue services attended 14,688 co- and first-responding medical incidents in 2012-13, including cardiac arrests, unconscious casualties, people with breathing difficulties and other serious conditions such as anaphylactic shock. The number of co- and first-responding incidents attended by the fire and rescue services is rising by about 10% or more each year, and is expected to treble to more than 30,000 by 2020. The number of category A ambulance incidents has more than doubled since 2002-03. The fire and rescue services have helped to achieve emergency response targets for an ever-increasing number of critical medical incidents.
It is clear that our two humanitarian services—fire and ambulance—are very effective when they work together, side by side. Without getting too far into the Bill, I have raised concerns before that police and crime commissioner takeovers of fire and rescue services may lead to fewer of these sorts of collaboration. The focus and energy of administrators will instead be devoted to responding to Whitehall’s agenda or the Government’s agenda of combining the police with fire services, and not necessarily working on the area of collaboration that will have the most positive benefits for the community.
Has the Minister carried out an assessment of the risk of a reduced collaboration between the ambulance and fire services, if mergers with PCCs go ahead and, if so, what mitigation has he put in place to try to prevent that? There is stark evidence that collaboration between ambulance services and the fire and rescue services saves lives. We cannot afford to see it crowded out by a top-down decision and Government imposition from Whitehall. It makes no sense, and it could take lives.
Having established the importance of collaboration between the blue light services, I will now argue that we are far from the limit of where collaboration can improve public services. In particular, the police force and fire service can and do play a vital role in early intervention and prevention programmes that aid public health, social care and social welfare. One of the many examples I could cite is the Springboard initiative carried out by Cheshire’s fire and rescue service. Firefighters on home visits go well beyond carrying out the traditional home safety assessment, which looks at fire alarms, electrical appliances, and the like. Instead, they use their time to spot the challenges that residents face regarding their health and well-being. Firefighters then report to the relevant parts of social services and other departments in local authorities, the health service, or, indeed, various local charities so that they can meet the needs that have been identified.
This is not insignificant. If hon. Members think about referrals such as those being made in their own area and multiply that by the number of fire and rescue services in the country, one can see the real value of making that first contact with vulnerable people, the preventive actions undertaken and, frankly, the savings for the NHS or social care in catching such issues early.
From May, the Cheshire scheme will focus on smoking cessation and alcohol consumption reduction—it is Lent and I have not had some for a while—as well as reducing hypertension and blood pressure, and informing residents about bowel cancer screening. That public health duty is carried out at the behest of the local authority, and it is innovative and important. The scheme makes a vast difference to the quality of life of many elderly residents in Cheshire, and there are 25,000 of those safe and well visits each year. That really shows what an asset public trust in the fire service can be, and how the subsequent reach in communities can help to improve public health and prevent harm.
In Gloucestershire, the fire and rescue service utilises public trust to aid Public Health England to prevent winter deaths from the cold. The Gloucestershire fire and rescue service is doing its bit to aid public health on its patch by installing thermometers in the homes of over-65s and referring elderly residents to their GP for a winter flu jab. That is just a local pilot at the moment but I look forward to hearing about the results as that type of scheme may become valuable in our quest to aid older constituents to stay healthy during the cold winter.
There are many more such schemes. I could talk about them today, but I am not going to because I hope that hon. Members will mention their own schemes. The schemes lead me to ask the Minister why the Bill limits collaboration agreements to ambulance trusts. Local authorities play a vital role in all the existing schemes and, under this Government, they have been given responsibility for public health, so why are they excluded from the new duty to collaborate? The provision, as written, seems arbitrary in scope. If we are to have a duty to collaborate—although I am rather surprised that the Minister thinks it necessary—why not use the duty as an opportunity to encourage more collaboration with more partners in more ventures such as the projects I described in Cheshire, Cornwall and Lincolnshire?
I say gently to the Minister—he knows that I like him quite a lot—that I fear that the decision to limit collaboration agreements to ambulance trusts speaks to a poverty of ambition for the fire service, which was, I am afraid, a hallmark of the previous Government. The Minister has been a firefighter and I am sure that he knows how much we can use a trusted set of skilled public workers in many different scenarios in the public health arena. Rather than using the Bill as an opportunity to recast and improve our public services to have the best and most resilient services possible, the Government seem driven only by the desire to pair with the police services in the hope that, by doing so, they will be able to find some immediate cuts.
The Government can see that savings can be made by sharing back-office functions in emergency response centres, so they make that their only legislative priority, but I fear that they simply cannot see past it. It is a missed opportunity and I genuinely do not understand why. Perhaps it is because preventive and early intervention work requires the investment of resources today to reap rewards in future. Perhaps it is because it is really difficult to quantify the savings that are made in this public health agenda. For example, we do not know how many older people who did not have the flu jab would have got influenza, found themselves in hospital and been unable to go back home. It is really difficult to quantify a “what if” scenario and offer it to the Treasury as a justification for the work that is done.
The Opposition believe in collaboration between the emergency services, but we recognise that services can benefit and improve when there is collaboration in as many areas as possible. The Government’s narrow vision does not seem to recognise vital preventive health work or its potential for public and preventive health improvement. If the Minister wants to convince the Opposition that these reforms are driven by the best interests of public services, and are not merely a fig leaf for hunting for spending cuts, I urge him to look at our amendments and broaden the scope of the collaboration agreements. He is a good man; I am sure that today we will have a good response from him to our very helpful interventions.
Mike Penning
As the shadow Minister said, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth, and that of Mr Nuttall on Thursdays.
I fully understand where the shadow Minister is coming from. However, the Bill is concerned with emergency services. If we were looking at only fire and police and the so-called takeover for savings, which I obviously disagree with substantially, we would not have included the ambulance service. The ambulance service is specifically in the Bill in the duty of collaboration.
The shadow Minister and I could read all day about areas where collaboration has taken place. From my experience, it has not gone far enough in most cases and we need an awful lot more. Someone said to me when I was on a recent visit, “We carry defibrillators on front-line appliances these days, Minister.” That is fantastic news, but so does the cashier at Tesco and Sainsbury’s. We need to go much further than that. In some parts of the country we have done so, particularly in Hampshire, where the collaboration is such that a firefighter could not be distinguished from an ambulance technician, because they have those skills. We need to do an awful lot more of that.
I understand the shadow Minister’s point, but nothing in the Bill will stop the collaboration that is already taking place. As Fire Minister, as well as Police Minister, I am adamant that the fire service measures outcomes, although that is difficult. Where does the finance come from for that? Should that come out of the fire budget or the health and social services budget, and should they be paid? That is one of the big discussions at the moment.
The principle the shadow Minister talks of is right, but the Bill applies to the three emergency services. As a former shipping Minister, I would also like to have seen collaboration with the coastguard service, but that is probably a little step further on. Nothing in the Bill would prevent the sort of thing that the shadow Minister wants to continue to thrive and move on. With that in mind, sadly at the start of the Committee, I have to say I am sorry.
Lyn Brown
I am genuinely glad that the Minister and I seem to be on the same page, and that he is talking about evaluation and who is going to pay for it. I believe that the only way that we are collectively going to learn about how our services work together and the impact they can make is by evaluating them properly. With that in mind, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2
Duties in relation to collaboration agreements
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 156, in clause 2, page 3, line 14, at end insert—
‘(8) For the purposes of this Bill, when considering whether a collaboration agreement would improve the effectiveness and efficiency of one or more emergency services that shall include the effectiveness and efficiency with which the emergency service is able to meet its duties under the mental health care concordant.’.
This amendment would explicitly enable a collaboration agreement to cover duties placed on emergency services by the mental health care concordant.
Amendment 169, in clause 2, page 3, line 14, at end insert—
‘(8) For the purposes of this Bill evaluation of the “effectiveness and efficiency” of emergency services includes, but is not limited to, the capacity of emergency services to respond to—
(a) major weather incidents, including flooding, and
(b) other major incidents, including terrorist attacks.’.
This amendment would require emergency services to consider whether a collaboration would improve its capacity to respond to major incidents, when considering whether such an agreement would be in the interests of effectiveness and efficiency.
Lyn Brown
Amendment 168 would ensure that the duty on emergency services to collaborate was carried out in the interests of both effectiveness and efficiency. Amendment 169 would require emergency services to consider whether collaboration would improve their capacity to respond to major incidents, such as flooding.
I tabled amendment 168 because the Bill places a duty on emergency services to collaborate in instances when collaboration would be in the interests of the relevant service’s “effectiveness or efficiency”. This might seem rather pedantic to the Committee, but there is a serious point: there cannot and should not be a trade-off between efficiency and effectiveness in our public services.
Lyn Brown
I doubt it.
Frankly, I worry that, under this Government, efficiency is synonymous with spending cuts. That is not good enough when it is targeted at a life-saving, trusted service.
Furthermore, there appear to be important discrepancies in the Bill. Clause 2(4)(a) places a duty on services to collaborate if
“the proposed collaboration would be in the interests of its efficiency or effectiveness”.
However, clause 2(4)(b) states that collaboration is required to be
“in the interests of its efficiency and effectiveness”.
First, will the Minister confirm whether he believes there is a difference in meaning between the two? Secondly, why is there such inconsistency?
Clause 3(1) makes provision that clause 2
“does not require a relevant…service in England to enter into a collaboration agreement if the service is of the view that the proposed collaboration would have an adverse effect on its efficiency or effectiveness.”
Let us follow the logic. Clause 2(4)(a) states that a proposed party must give effect to the proposed collaboration, as set out in subsection (5), if
“a proposed party is of the view that the proposed collaboration would be in the interests of its efficiency or effectiveness”.
Mike Penning
Just to clarify, clause 2(4)(b) is wrong and I will amend it later. It should state “or” not “and”.
Lyn Brown
No, it is not.
Let us imagine that the relevant services deem that collaboration would have a positive impact on efficiency, regardless of the impact on effectiveness. Under clause 2(4)(a), those services would be duty bound to collaborate. However, if the relevant services deemed that collaboration would have an adverse impact on effectiveness, under clause 3(1) they would not be required to collaborate. That gives rise to an absurd situation whereby a service can be both duty bound and not required to collaborate simultaneously. It is, quite simply, nonsensical.
It would be very efficient to close half the fire stations in the country and halve the number of fire engines. It would certainly save money, but it would not be effective in saving lives and buildings. It would undoubtedly increase response times. Should not collaboration be both efficient and effective, saving money if possible, while providing equal if not superior effectiveness in the service? I am sure that the Minister understands my logic. I hope that he will go away and have a conversation with his team and then come back to this provision, because the Bill risks prioritising spending cuts over an effective emergency service. It is inconsistent, confusing and ambiguous.
I know that the Minister cares deeply about the emergency services that keep us all safe. I know he believes that collaboration should always be done in the name of service improvement. I therefore hope that when he leaves here and has a cup of tea for his lunch, he will consider the amendment properly. I do not mind whether he accepts it today or uses it as a drafting amendment later in the progress of the Bill.
Amendment 169 would require emergency services to consider whether collaboration would improve their capacity to respond to major incidents, such as flooding. The Bill fails to create a specific statutory duty to collaborate on major incidents. We believe that collaboration can be at its most effective when militating against major risks and responding to the worst disasters. Our amendment would direct collaboration agreements towards such major incidents, particularly floods and—as is sadly pertinent—terrorist incidents.
Unfortunately, major incidents are on the rise. As the climate has changed, flooding has become increasingly common across the country. Although we have not suffered a major terrorist attack since 2005, I think we would all agree that the threat of terrorism still looms. MI5 has set the current threat from international terrorism in the UK at “severe”.
In December, we saw much of the north of England devastated by flooding. I know that this is not news to the Government. On 5 January, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs informed the House that 16,000 properties had been flooded during the wettest December for 100 years. Many homes were flooded, bridges connecting communities were washed away, major roads were blocked and, in Lancaster, a substation was flooded, leaving tens of thousands of homes without power. In December alone, firefighters responded to more than 1,400 flood incidents across the north-west. On Boxing day, 1,000 people were rescued in Greater Manchester alone.
This winter’s example is not an isolated incident, nor is this a regional problem. In the winter of 2013-14, the south of England experienced devastating flooding. The Environment Agency reported that at least 6,000 properties were flooded, and damage to the rail network meant that a key transport link to the south-west was severed for many weeks.
Major incidents are not limited to flooding. We all remember 7/7 and the devastation caused on our streets in London. I am thankful that we have not seen another major terrorist incident of that nature. However, the recent atrocities in Paris and what is going on in Brussels today are clear reminders that we must remain prepared to deal with terrorist attacks in our major cities.
The Minister is well aware of the disaster training exercise that was carried out in a mocked-up Waterloo station two weeks ago. I really wish that I could have seen it. Firefighters and other emergency service workers carried out the UK’s largest ever simulated rescue to improve co-ordination and planning during a major incident. It was a practical demonstration of the range of demands on modern firefighters, paramedics and police officers.
Fire and rescue services’ responsibility to provide national resilience is set out in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and the national framework of 2013. Fire and rescue services are required to respond to several national and international risks, including extreme weather, terrorist threats and industrial incidents, as well as prolonged energy shortages or outages. The chief fire officers would welcome a statutory duty on resilience and the funding to support it, as the only thing for which they currently receive stand-alone funding is aerial search and rescue. That is simply not good enough.
Weather incidents are on the rise and emergency services must remain vigilant and prepared for the threat of terror, yet the mantra to justify cuts to fire and rescue services is that demand for the fire service is falling. The explanatory notes to the Bill argue that the relevant policy background is a “fall in incidents” to which the fire service responds, but we cannot even begin to measure demand on the basis of the number of times it is called out to deal with situations. We need our fire service to militate against the most severe risks and prepare the best response to those risks.
Equating demand for the fire service with call-outs, as this Government persistently do, not only overlooks the important work that our emergency services carry out in fire prevention, but fundamentally misunderstands the evolving role of the emergency services in the 21st century. There has indeed been a reduction in the number of fires in the home and in the number of fire deaths and injuries, and there has been a rise in the proportion of homes with smoke alarms from 74% to 88%, as was reported by the English housing survey. We must all welcome that important change. It is the result of fire and rescue services undertaking millions of home fire safety checks and installing fire safety products in homes, which began in earnest in 2004 with the installation of long-life smoke alarms.
Despite the focus on prevention, more than 2.5 million English homes remain without a smoke alarm, and the alarms installed in 2004 are, sadly, coming to the end of their life. Understandably, the fire and rescue services are revisiting homes and continuing to seek to reach the remaining 2.5 million-plus homes. The English fire and rescue service completed 747,990 home fire safety checks in 2012-13. I am sorry, but that is the latest year for which I have figures. The number of home safety checks peaked at 811,132 in 2008-09.
Fire and rescue services undertake other forms of community fire safety work, with 164,064 school visits, arson prevention work and youth diversion events, and 75,543 statutory fire safety inspections taking place in 2012-13. Fire safety education has become a standard feature in primary schools, with the support of fire and rescue services. All forms of community fire safety work have increased in quantity and sophistication.
Fire and rescue services are responsible for far more than responding to fires. They attend a wide range of emergencies, including road traffic collisions, floods and medical incidents. A Department for Communities and Local Government report in 2012 noted that there were 51,982 rescues and extrications of casualties by the fire and rescue service between April 2009 and September 2011 at road traffic collisions, other transport incidents, suicide attempts and other special service incidents. There are more than 20,000 rescues and extrications each year. The decline in the number of fires should not distract us from the continued important and valued life-saving role of fire and rescue services at such incidents.
Additionally, as we discussed earlier, the fire and rescue service is playing an ever more important role in attending medical incidents—termed first and co-responding incidents—at the behest of the ambulance service. That support is particularly important in rural and semi-rural areas, where it is difficult to provide a comprehensive and rapid ambulance service.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. Amendment 156 is a probing amendment; I will not divide the Committee on it. As I said on Second Reading, I welcome what the Government are doing through the Bill to amend the Mental Health Act 1983, in particular ensuring that people in mental health crisis do not end up in police cells. I have a little bit of sympathy for the police in terms of how they deal with such individuals. The police are not the appropriate people to deal with those in mental health crisis, but sadly they are sometimes the only ones available. The dedication of our policemen and women is such that they will not turn away people in that type of crisis. The purpose of my amendment is to probe whether we can get more collaboration between the police, the health service and other agencies, including local government.
In February 2014, the mental health concordat was agreed between the third sector, the police, local authorities and the NHS. It is important to read the joint statement, which states:
“We commit to work together to improve the system of care and support so people in crisis because of a mental health condition are kept safe and helped to find the support they need—whatever the circumstances in which they first need help—and from whichever service they turn to first.
We will work together, and with local organisations, to prevent crises happening whenever possible through prevention and early intervention. We will make sure we meet the needs of vulnerable people in urgent situations. We will strive to make sure that all relevant public services support someone who appears to have a mental health problem to move towards Recovery.
Jointly, we hold ourselves accountable for enabling this commitment to be delivered across England.”
I accept that there is no statutory basis for the concordat, which is a problem, but I think it is important to draw the Committee’s attention to the final sentence of the joint statement:
“Jointly, we hold ourselves accountable for enabling this commitment to be delivered across England.”
Well, currently there is no mechanism by which those organisations—I am not criticising any individual—are held accountable for delivering what they promised in the concordat. There is a desperate need for that.
The concordat’s aims are very good. I have seen some very good examples of joint working between all services, including the police, fire service, ambulance service, NHS and local authorities up and down the country. There are examples of mental health professionals being co-located with police officers and triage teams, and that is certainly working very well. In my local NHS trust, community psychiatric nurses are appointed in A&E because, unfortunately, A&E is one of the places to which people in mental health crisis turn because they are unable to get help elsewhere—even though, as everyone knows, that is the last place they need to be. Having a mental health professional has clearly helped in my local hospital by ensuring that people in mental health crisis do not sit around for hours on end getting no form of treatment.
I accept that this is not necessarily just a police problem; it cuts across other Departments including Health. The amendment questions whether we can use the Bill to put the concordat on to some type of statutory basis and to provide for a presumption that local authorities and others should work together locally to deliver the concordat’s aims, to which most people would sign up. Is the amendment about money? No, it is not. Properly implemented, it could save money. Time that the police spend dealing with people in mental health crisis is time that they are not spending doing other things that they are perhaps better qualified to do. Perhaps the Minister could look at this issue and talk to his colleagues in the Department of Health, so that on Report we can have an indication of how this operation could be enforceable. I do not think that it should fall solely on the shoulders of the police.
Jack Dromey
My hon. Friend speaks with great authority on this crucial issue. He makes the point about police time. The Oleaster centre in Birmingham, a collaborative venture between the NHS, the police and the local authority, has seen the average police time spent on a section 136 incident reduced from 14 hours to five hours. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a powerful argument, regarding not just appropriate treatment of those suffering from mental illness, but the efficient use of police time, for having such facilities nationwide? What he proposes would be very helpful towards that end.
Mr Kevan Jones
I do. The example to which my hon. Friend refers is replicated in other parts of the country where the police have in many cases taken the lead, working jointly with the NHS to set up those facilities. They make the experience better for those individuals who are in crisis. As he rightly says, they provide a more efficient way to deal with police time. Without a provision to enable this, I fear we will do all the work in the Bill on changes to the Mental Health Act 1983, which I welcome, but end up saying, “This is what we want to happen but will it happen in practice?” The example in his constituency shows that where there is a will and local drive, this can happen. My fear is that we will get a patchwork quilt of provision across the country. It would be helpful if we could make co-operation to deal with these issues statutory. I will come to another point later when we talk to amendments relating to the Mental Health Act.
I commend the Government’s aim to prevent people in mental health crisis from going to police cells. However, unless there is alternative provision in place, that will not happen. The need to monitor what happens to individuals should be recognised. If we reach the point, which we all want, of having no one in police cells, but without the people concerned getting adequate care elsewhere, we will have failed them. I will address that point later. I am now interested to hear what the Minister has to say.
Mike Penning
I say at the outset that I understand the intention and good will behind the amendments. I put my hand up to a typo where “and” appears instead of “or”, which will be corrected later.
I say to the shadow Minister that the duty in clause 2 would be subject to the restriction in clause 3. Clause 3(1) sets aside the duty to enter into a particular collaboration agreement if that agreement would negatively impact on efficiency or effectiveness. Therefore, the Bill specifically addresses the point she raised. I will not dwell on that because it is not a matter of semantics. She is quite right, but clause 3 addresses that.
Mike Penning
On that narrow point. I have no idea why the shadow Minister was not invited to the brilliant exercise, which was the largest we have ever seen. I was not there either, although I had been invited, because I was at Didcot, for reasons colleagues will understand.
Mr Kevan Jones
I welcome the Minister’s point. Our amendments are the grit in the oyster, in the sense that they are going to force others to improve facilities. Having seen different Departments when in government, I know that without some direction from the Bill, it will not happen. The Minister and his colleagues have great intentions and I pay tribute to him and to the Home Secretary for addressing this issue, but without something on the face of the Bill or some movement during the passage of the Bill, it will not happen.
Mike Penning
Nothing would happen if we were not doing this. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind comments. We are starting to drive this. An inter-ministerial group on that specific issue was formed during the last Government. It still sits and it will push on with this. I do not think that the amendment is necessarily the right vehicle, but I agree that we must push it forward. Otherwise, the health and social services will be knocking at the door, saying, “We’ve got nowhere else to go,” as we often hear.
I used to experience that when I was in the fire service, and it still goes on. I have been stationed with the police when it has happened. It is usually at 4 o’clock on a Friday afternoon. Social services phone up saying, “We haven’t seen Mary or Johnny. Would you go round and check on them over the weekend?” The answer must be “No, that is your legal responsibility, not ours.” I know that that is a development of what we were talking about, but it is exactly what goes on: “Would you go in and open up for them?”. It is a difficult area, but one that we must touch on.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
All the areas in which we are talking about collaborating with police forces are devolved in Wales. I suggest that somewhere along the line, thought needs to be given to how such collaboration will work in that unique situation.
Mike Penning
We have discussed that with all the devolved Administrations. This proposal refers to the concordat within England, because obviously that is devolved, but I do not think that any devolved Administration would not want to do what we are discussing. They might have a different mechanism for implementing it, but nobody wants somebody with a mental illness episode to be treated any differently from someone with a broken leg or other physical injury; hopefully we have moved on from that. That is what we are trying to do.
The shadow Minister has made a point on a couple of occasions about co-responding. This is not just about rural communities—thank goodness London is now doing co-responding through a pilot. I served in areas that were quite rural areas and in areas, like the M25, that could not be described as rural—it is more like a giant car park at most times. For one reason or another, the other emergency services often did not arrive for some time.
We want to save lives. That is part and parcel of what the emergency services do. Co-responding is critical to that, as is moving on, in training terms, way beyond some of the things that we have discussed today. For instance, in Hampshire, the service was desperate to get the necessary qualifications to give fluids by IV. We know from Afghanistan and Iraq that that saves lives.
I understand the theme, but I do not agree with the amendments, because I think that they are unnecessary. Sadly, yet again, I will oppose them.
Lyn Brown
I thank the Minister for his response. I have not been to see London since my early days, and my early stint as the shadow Fire Minister before the election, so I am grateful to him for letting me know about the pilot. I will get in touch with London so that I can find out more, because I am interested. I have also not been to Hampshire; I do not believe that I have been invited yet. I deliberately did not go to see the flooding. I felt that it was inappropriate for me to be a water tourist, and that I would merely get in the way, so I have not been up or down to flooded areas.
Mike Penning
The hon. Lady is absolutely right: neither of us should be at an incident. Having politicians there is dangerous. Once it is finished and we are starting to learn, the experience that she will get from the frontline is better than any briefing she will ever get.
Lyn Brown
The Minister is absolutely right, which is why I spent my time as shadow Fire Minister during my first stint popping up and down the country, going to many fire and rescue authorities in constituencies represented in this room. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I said to the people affected by flooding that when they had dried out, I would be grateful for the opportunity to come and talk to them, although I have not yet had an invitation. In my second stint as shadow Fire Minister, I look forward to renewing my request to be talked to and to pop up and down the country yet again, as part of this impressive, exciting and enjoyable part of my brief.
I am grateful to the Minister for being open to the idea of a statutory duty on flooding. We both know that professionals in the fire service have called for that duty since the last days of the last Labour Government, and I genuinely think that it would be welcome and useful. If nothing else, the fire service would welcome some kind of acceptance, understanding or acknowledgment of its work on flooding.
I have talked about major incidents, and the Minister tried to reassure me on that, but the chief officers of six metropolitan fire and rescue services recently warned that they feel that the UK’s resilience to major incidents is at threat. They genuinely believe that the reduction in plant and firefighters would make us weaker in our resilience to a terrorist threat. I do not want to ramp that up into a big issue—I am not fearmongering—but we all need to recognise that that is what our professionals are saying to us. Collectively, we do not want to get into a position where our fire services cannot respond to incidents, where they are needed.
I leave it at that. The Minister has been very generous, and very sweet in offering to invite me to the next big event, so long as the gift is in his hand and there is no other reason for me not to go.
Lyn Brown
The Opposition support the duty to collaborate, and thus we will not be voting against clause 2, but I take this opportunity to raise some concerns about the way in which the clause is drafted. Subsection (5) makes it mandatory for emergency services to enter into collaboration agreements when conditions are met, which is a move away from the successful programme of treating collaboration in communities as a voluntary, organic exercise among blue light services. As we have heard this morning, and as all Members will agree, excellent local collaborations have saved a number of lives. Collaboration projects are already happening between emergency services across the country, and we welcome that direction of travel. Well-designed, thought-through collaboration projects can allow for better and more comprehensive service delivery, saving on back-office costs so that resources can be diverted to the frontline.
That is all good practice. Much of the collaborative work that the Government wish to encourage is already happening, and it will continue to happen as pilots are evaluated and lessons learned. Our emergency service professionals are good people. They do not need to be told of the benefits of collaboration, and they are best placed to judge when collaboration is in the interests of their communities.
I do not have time to go through a whole bunch of examples—I could if I wanted to take up the Committee’s time—but I will mention a few. For Members who are interested in reading about further examples, I recommend the excellent “Beyond Fighting Fires” report by the Local Government Association, which contains a series of enlightening case studies. One case study is the safe and independent living initiative from Dorset fire and rescue service. In 2008, Dorset suffered 13 separate home fire deaths, having previously experienced just one or two a year. The Dorset service, understandably, wanted to know what was happening. It investigated thoroughly and found out that half the fires were caused by smoking and combustible materials and the other half were caused by electrical factors. All the deaths were harrowingly preventable. The service also found out that the majority of people who died were known to one or other of the public sector services.
Mr Kevan Jones
My hon. Friend makes a good point, as these things are already happening. In my local area in Durham, the fire and rescue service works closely with the police and ambulance services, particularly in co-location of appliances. For example, in Barnard Castle, which is in a rural area, the ambulance, fire, police and mountain rescue services work together, which improves the service but saves money for the estate.
Lyn Brown
I thank my hon. Friend for reminding me of my visit to Durham fire and rescue service. I was really impressed by what they were doing. They were clearly cash-strapped, but went out to maximise their impact and save money where they could by collaboration. Their most important focus was on saving lives and improving services to the local area, and I was very impressed.
The clause gives the impression that under this Government there is a hierarchy of services, and that the fire service is the equivalent of Lepidus—that is, the least in the triumvirate. That is from Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra”—I did it at A-level. The Opposition believe that collaboration between the emergency services is a good thing. Providing the funds to encourage and support collaboration, and giving an opportunity to evaluate the collaboration and disseminate good practice, are essential. Providing an institutional framework for supporting further collaboration has some merit, but it is likely to be superfluous and I honestly believe that there are dangers in making that mandatory. Local experts, who understand their service and their local needs, are best placed to make final decisions about collaboration—just as they have been doing effectively over the past few years.
Mr Kevan Jones
May I echo the points made by my hon. Friend? This is actually happening on the ground. As a former Minister, I have seen close up the tendency of this Government to think that all the pearls of wisdom are contained within Whitehall, when clearly they are not. As my hon. Friend says, in many cases this is being driven by cost. County Durham and Darlington fire and rescue service, whose budget has been cut by the Government, has had to look at new ways of delivering services. However, the driver has not just been cost; it is also the recognition that, working together, ambulance, police, fire—and, in this case, mountain rescue—services can deliver a better service for the public. That public sector ethos is alive and kicking in my local area, where the public come first in terms of the service they give. If they can do things to improve that, it is all the better.
What would the Minister judge as collaboration? I accept that he might want to give examples of where that is not happening and the reasons why. In Durham, we have tri-responders: the police, fire and ambulance services. In a large rural county such as Durham it is not possible to have a physical presence from all three services in all areas, and they have worked together very closely. That has been driven not just by the police and crime commissioner but by other services working together.
What would be an example of failure? The Bill talks about co-operation, but to what level? Is this about the response to incidents? There are good examples of the co-location of services. In County Durham, it is not just about ensuring that we get more efficient use of estates. Things such as open days and the provision of public information, including to schools, are now being done on a joint basis by the police and fire. As my hon. Friend rightly says, the incidents that affect many of our constituents are not just pigeonholed as requiring a police response, a fire response or an ambulance response. Those things are working very well, so I would like to know what will be achieved with this measure. Can the Minister point to examples of where that is not happening and, if it is not happening, has he examined why? I have outlined the great work being done in County Durham. What would the Minister see as failure or as not meeting the co-operation target? Is he laying down from Whitehall, as seems to be the tendency of this Government, a framework that local PCCs and fire authorities have to meet if they are to meet this test? I think that, without that, what happens in different areas will be pretty arbitrary.
I represent quite a rural constituency in County Durham, although the Government have not recognised Durham as a rural county in their local government funding settlements, possibly because it votes Labour rather than Conservative. Responses that work in London may not work in rural areas such as County Durham. Providing the flexibility to allow local fire chiefs, local fire authorities, PCCs and the NHS to collaborate on what works best locally would be the right approach. If the Minister tries to direct from Whitehall a template that each area has to adopt, it will not work.
Mike Penning
I will not detain the Committee long. I think that there were three main questions.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend the Minister give way?
Jake Berry
May I encourage the Minister not to listen to the representations from the Labour party? The whole point of the Bill is that it does not seek to put PCCs and fire services in the straitjacket of a definition driven from Whitehall. I hope that he will, in the spirit of the Bill, ensure that it is a localist, devolution Bill, rather than one seeking straitjackets directed by the Minister in Committee.
Mike Penning
My hon. Friend may well be sitting in this chair in a couple of years’ time if he makes contributions like that, or in even less time than that. In a perfect world, this legislation would not be required. It would not be required if all the wonderful work that we hear is going on around the country was universally going on. One size does not fit all, but London probably is an example. The responsibility will not be with a PCC; it will be with the Mayor. We are passing the responsibility for fire services to the Mayor. How many fire stations in London are police stations?
Mike Penning
I will give way to my hon. Friend, who is much more experienced in this.
James Cleverly
The hon. Member for North Durham asked for examples. May I provide one from my London Assembly constituency rather than my parliamentary constituency? In Bexleyheath, the Bexleyheath fire station shares a party wall with a London ambulance station, which shares a party wall with a Transport for London bus depot, which is only a few yards from the Metropolitan Police headquarters. They all have separate cleaning contracts. They all have separate catering contracts. That is in an area where we have made a concerted effort to have more collaborative working, so I think that it is fair to say that this needs extra impetus. That is just one ultra-local example.
Lyn Brown
I am not going to stand here and argue that London does not have its problems, because quite clearly it has. One of the reasons why the London bit is in the Bill is because the existing London bit has not worked; there has been serious conflict, which has seriously damaged London’s ability to respond to the collaborative agenda as other areas of the country have. However, the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham still stands, because I have not been anywhere else in the country where there has not been collaboration with fire and rescue services, and with other services.
The Chair
Order. I have been very generous with interventions, I remind Members that interventions need to be short and to the point, and should contain a question. So far, I do not think that any of the interventions have fulfilled any of those requirements, and I expect interventions to do so in future.
Mike Penning
Finally, I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree that I will listen to Opposition Members and I will particularly listen to the shadow policing Minister, the hon. Member for West Ham. The duty of collaboration is welcome; there is no doubt about that. I agree with my hon. Friend completely; that is why the duty is in the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 3 to 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 6
Provision for police and crime commissioner to be fire and rescue authority
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Lyn Brown
The Opposition do not believe that the Government have even begun to make the case for the fundamental governance reforms to the fire and rescue service that would be introduced by clause 6, so we will vote to remove it, and consequential schedule 1, from the Bill.
Clause 6 and schedule 1 contain provisions that allow for a police and crime commissioner to become a fire and rescue authority and, in so doing, effectively assume control of a fire and rescue service. I will have plenty to say in later debates about the lopsided process by which the Government are proposing that these takeovers should happen, and what the governance and scrutiny of the fire and rescue service would look like once the takeovers have gone ahead, but I will take this opportunity to discuss the merits of the proposal in the first place.
I know that that is not the way the Government think things should be done. They have been quite happy to go through a consultation exercise that does not ask stakeholders what they think of the merits of the proposals, and they have completely ignored the recommendation of Sir Ken Knight that these proposals need to be put through a rigorous pilot programme so that we can know whether they are likely to bring about any benefits.
It was not really a consultation, was it? It was stuffed full of leading questions that were not about whether the plans were right or about what should be done, but about how to implement them. The Government have ignored the evidence-based strategy suggested by Sir Ken. Why did the Government not undertake a pilot, as recommended by the Knight review? Why not undertake a proper risk assessment and outline the implications of the plans, alongside those of the budget cuts that are now starting to take effect and affect response times? The Government have acted on the assumption that it is a given that police and crime commissioners will get powers to take over the fire and rescue services. Why is that reasonable? They need to present arguments as to why that is a good idea. In whose interest is it? It is not right simply to propose reforms to a vital public service without producing a detailed set of arguments as to why those reforms are in the best interests of that service and the public.
Government impact assessments always start with the same two questions: “What is the problem under consideration?” and “Why is Government intervention necessary?” Those are two very conservative questions: if there is no evidence that something is not working as well as it should or that there is a problem that needs to be solved, the Government simply do not have reason to act. They should certainly not be legislating for its own sake. If the problem is London, legislate on London.
There is absolutely nothing in the impact assessment identifying tangible problems with the governance of the fire service, nor is there any attempt to explain why the legislation is necessary. The only relevant reason in the impact assessment is the fact that the Conservative manifesto pledged to “develop the role” of police and crime commissioners. Why is that? What did the fire service do to deserve this? It is an extraordinary way to go about the business of government. I am not surprised that civil servants at the Home Office could not come up with any tangible reasons why PCCs need to play a role in the governance of the fire and rescue service; there are plenty of reasons to think it is a bad idea.
Mr Kevan Jones
Although the clause refers to the fire and rescue service, it does not refer to ambulance services, for example. Does my hon. Friend agree that PCCs adopting ambulance services is a logical conclusion, if they are to encompass all the emergency services in an area?
Lyn Brown
I can only imagine that the Home Office lost the argument with the Department of Health. That is the only thing that comes to mind. The Home Office wanted a big takeover for PCCs, but it has failed to do so because the Department of Health said no.
PCCs are a nascent institution. With suitable caution, the Home Affairs Committee has said that it is
“too early to say whether the introduction of police and crime commissioners has been a success.”
If we do not know whether PCCs have been a success in their core duties, why are the Government proposing that they expand their portfolio by adopting fire services? We all hope that the turnout for PCC elections in May is better than the 15% managed the first time round, but before we hand over more powers to PCCs, would it not be better to see whether public support and interest in the institution has improved from such a dismally low level?
The Government may see things differently and want to bolster the powers and budgets of PCCs to help them through their difficult start, but a vital public service such as fire should not be pawned off to save struggling Whitehall inventions. What is next? Stretched NHS ambulance trusts running community volunteering schemes to rekindle the big society?
Lyn Brown
I am frightened of giving the hon. Gentleman ideas, particularly if he is going to rise to the Front Bench.
We know that the Chancellor is very fond of mayors. I have no problem with them, but they should not be imposed. The coalition Government balloted people, and in nine out of 10 metropolitan areas, people said no. However, the Chancellor likes to get his own way by attaching mayors to combined authorities in exchange for devolved powers. Could he get more mayors by developing the role of PCCs? Is that what this proposal is about? Get PCCs to take over fire and rescue, and what is next? Will it be probation, the ambulance service or some of the free schools? Perhaps I should not give anybody ideas.
We must also question what expertise PCCs are supposed to bring to the management of fire and rescue services that those services do not themselves possess. Most of the present batch of PCCs were selected by their parties before they even knew that PCCs could take control of their fire services, so a candidate’s vision, plans and manifestos for their local fire service cannot have played much role in their political ascent.
Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady not agree that PCCs have as much experience as many members of the fire authorities, who are councillors? I do not see any additional expertise there.
Lyn Brown
The hon. Lady is mistaken. Councillors play a prominent role on many management committees of fire and rescue services, but they are not the only players. I do not know whether she has met many of them, but they are people who have devoted their time in local government to truly understanding and working on fire issues. They know so much. There is a wealth of knowledge and experience on those panels. When I am in a room with them, I cannot but be impressed by their collective—
Lyn Brown
I hear the hon. Lady saying that about her own fire and rescue authority. When I get back to my office, I will have a look to see which fire and rescue authority it is and why she has such a view, but in my experience of speaking to people from each political party who have served on fire and rescue service committees, they are highly knowledgeable and committed to the area for which they are responsible. I do not like to denigrate local democracy in that way. We in the Labour party appreciate what our local councillors do, many of them for not much reward at all.
The point that I am making is not that PCCs are bad and fire services are good; it is that in the Bill, the Government are creating unnecessary conflicts with one preferred model: PCC control, the favoured approach. It is not about what works locally, and it should be. If the Government are to turn PCCs into mini-mayors with responsibility for all sorts of policy positions, which I think is their real agenda, they should at least do so openly, so the democratic process can respond to the expanding office.
I genuinely think that the proposals come with significant risks. The most important is that fire, with its much smaller budgets and less media attention than policing, will become an unloved secondary concern of management, a Cinderella service. I have raised that point repeatedly with the Minister, but he has not indicated what he proposes to do to mitigate that risk. I know that he wants to champ on with the Bill, but I would like him to answer that particular point. What will he do to ensure that the fire services taken over by PCCs do not become Cinderella services?
Peter Murphy, the director of the public policy and management research group at Nottingham Business School, has argued that slipping into the status of a Cinderella service would only be a repeat of what happened the last time the fire service had to share an agenda with policing. I shall quote him, because it gets to the point. He said that
“if the current plans are implemented, there is a very strong chance that the fire and rescue services would go back to the ‘benign neglect’ that characterised the service from 1974 to 2001, when the Home Office was last responsible for fire services. Police, civil disobedience, immigration and criminal justice dominated the Home Office agenda, as well as its time and resources.”
If the fire service becomes the lesser partner in a merged service
“the long-term implications will include smaller fire crews with fewer appliances and older equipment arriving at incidents. Prevention and protection work, already significantly falling, will result in fewer school visits and fire alarm checks for the elderly, not to mention the effect on business, as insurance costs rise because of increased risks to buildings and premises.”
What a chilling vision for the future of our fire service.
Mike Penning
I often agree with the shadow Minister, but on this one she has taken her feed from the FBU too far.
Mike Penning
That is my view. I have listened to the shadow Minister’s view, and that is my view.
I quite like some of Sir Ken Knight’s comments, which the shadow Minister quoted extensively. Sir Ken is probably the biggest reason why the measure is in the Bill. I do not know whether the Committee noticed, but the shadow Minister’s argument is almost identical to the one against PCCs taking over the police. It was a Labour party manifesto commitment to abolish PCCs. Labour lost and changed its mind. This measure is a Conservative manifesto commitment, and we will take it through Parliament.
Sir Ken Knight was specific. He said that collaboration between the emergency services across the whole country is patchy and will not begin to change consistently without more joined-up and accountable leadership. The police and crime commissioners are uniquely placed to provide that leadership, which is why we support clause 6.
Mike Penning
The rest of it was rubbish, so I am not going to bother responding to it.
Lyn Brown
That is poor from the Minister, really poor indeed. There are serious issues here. If he wants to quote Ken Knight, let us quote Ken Knight. I ask the Minister yet again why he has not conducted the pilot that Ken suggested in his report. Why not do the pilots? My second question is: why now? We have PCC elections in a couple of months’ time, and this is not even in the manifestos of the candidates who are standing in those elections. The public will not be given an opportunity to decide whether they want X running their fire services, as well as their police services. In fact, the PCC candidates have not really been given an opportunity to debate fire services and what they would actually do with them, such as whether they would choose to take the option of putting them under the control of—
Lyn Brown
It is not an FBU line, and I really, really resent that suggestion. In previous discussions, the Minister and I have managed to be courteous to each other. I urge him not to diminish my political concerns by telling me that they come from someone else. They do not; they come from my being a local councillor for 18 years and my belief that local councillors and local democracy matter. The Minister has done the Committee no favours at all with his very short answers in response to the comments and concerns that my hon. Friends and I have expressed. Perhaps he would like to take some time and do it again.
Jack Dromey
Like my hon. Friend, I am disappointed that, a powerful case having been made, there should be such a cursory reply. The point was made earlier that PCCs are elected. Yes, they are, but so too are local authority representatives on fire authorities—they are elected, and they are accountable. Why is it that a PCC, with the support of the Home Secretary, could take over responsibility for the fire service against the will of locally elected representatives? That cannot be localism by any description.
Lyn Brown
I totally and utterly agree with my hon. Friend. I think the Minister has done this Committee a disservice by not answering our questions properly. I urge him to get back on his feet and give us a much more reasonable and considered answer to the points that we have made.
Mr Kevan Jones
On a point of order, Mr Howarth. This is a habit of the Minister. On Second Reading, he gave a 15-minute—or even less—response to the debate, and we saw that again today. I thought the purpose of Committee was to scrutinise legislation and for the Government to argue their case for the Bill. That is not what we have seen today. I wonder whether you can give some guidance to the Minister. He needs to answer questions or even put a case for his proposals.
The Chair
As the hon. Gentleman knows, that is not a point of order. The Chair is not responsible for the Minister’s response. He is responsible for his own response, so I will not allow the matter to go any further.
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Lyn Brown
I beg to move amendment 174, in schedule 1, page 113, line 12, leave out “or” and insert “and”.
This amendment ensures that when the Secretary of State decides whether to allow the Fire and Rescue Service to come under control of PCCs she must do so in the interest of “economy, efficiency and effectiveness” and “in the interest of public safety”.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 181, in schedule 1, page 122, line 10, at end insert—
“with the cost of obtaining such information to be met by the police and crime commissioner.”
This amendment would require the police and crime commissioner to pay the costs the fire and rescue authority incurs in providing the police and crime commissioner with the information needed to prepare a proposal to transfer governance to the police and crime commissioner.
Amendment 172, in schedule 1, page 122, line 22, leave out sub-paragraph (a) and insert—
“(a) consult each relevant fire and rescue authority,
(ab) any local authority all or part of whose area forms part of the fire and rescue authority area, and
(ac) the relevant workforces.”
This amendment will make it a statutory obligation for the local authority Fire and Rescue Authority, and relevant workforces, to be consulted before being taken over by a PCC.
Amendment 170, in schedule 1, page 122, line 25, leave out “make arrangements to seek the views of” and insert “consult comprehensively with”.
This amendment would require a police and crime commissioner to consult local residents about the proposal to transfer governance of the fire and rescue service to the police and crime commissioner.
Amendment 171, in schedule 1, page 122, line 26, leave out “commissioner’s police” and insert “fire and rescue authority”.
This amendment would mean that police and crime commissioners need only seek the views of people living in the affected fire and rescue authority rather than across the whole of the police force area.
Amendment 180, in schedule 1, page 122, line 43, after “proposal”, insert “from an independent panel of experts chosen by the relevant police and crime commissioner and local authorities,”.
This amendment would guarantee the independence of panels tasked with assessing takeover proposals submitted by a PCC.
Amendment 173, schedule 1, page 123, line 17, at end insert—
“(4) An order under section 4A, where modified or not by the Secretary of State, may only be made with the consent of the relevant local authority, relevant fire and rescue authority and relevant police and crime commissioner.”
This amendment makes it a statutory requirement for the Secretary of State to get the consent of the PCC, Fire and Rescue Authority, and local authority, before making an order.
Amendment 177, in schedule 1, page 123, line 17, at end insert—
“(4) Before submitting a section 4A proposal to the Secretary of State, a relevant police and crime commissioner must make arrangements to hold a referendum.
(5) The persons entitled to vote in the referendum are those who, on the day of the referendum—
(a) would be entitled to vote as electors at an election for the relevant police and crime commissioner, and
(b) are registered in the register of local government electors at an address that is within a relevant fire authority area.
(6) The referendum is to be held on—
(a) a suitable date corresponding to the regular electoral cycle, or
(b) if there are no elections scheduled within the next 365 days, such other date as the Secretary of State may specify by order.
(7) The police and crime commissioner must inform the Secretary of State of the result of the referendum.
(8) The Secretary of State may only grant an order if—
(a) the proposal was approved by a majority of persons voting in the referendum, and
(b) the turnout for the referendum is greater than 25 per cent of those eligible to vote.
(9) A police and crime commissioner may not hold another referendum within the period of ten years.”
This amendment would ensure that a PCC can only take over a Fire and Rescue Service with the approval of local people.
Amendment 178, in schedule 1, page 123, line 17, at end insert—
“(4) An order under section 4A, where modified or not by the Secretary of State, may only be made with either: consent of the relevant local authority and relevant fire and rescue authority, or a majority vote by local people through referendum.”
This amendment would ensure that a PCC can only take over a Fire and Rescue Service with the approval of local people or their local representatives.
Mr Kevan Jones
It would be nice to hear the case for why PCCs should take over fire and rescue services, because we have failed to hear that from the Minister.
Lyn Brown
We have indeed failed yet again to hear a case from the Minister as to why this massive change to how our public services are run is to happen. I really am disappointed that the Minister did not take the opportunity in the previous debate to give us some decent reasons. But there are none—simply because of one obscure line in the Conservative party manifesto, the Government want to boost the role of PCCs. That is a really poor reason.
However, if the Government intend to go down that path and the reforms are to happen, the Bill could be strengthened if the Government accepted the amendments. They would make significant changes to the process by which a PCC can take over, and to the structures of accountability and scrutiny that they face once they have taken charge of the local fire service.
Amendment 174 would ensure that the Secretary of State could approve a takeover only if it was in the best interests of public safety and efficiency. The schedule currently requires it to be in the best interests of only one or the other. Amendment 181 would require a police and crime commissioner to pay the costs incurred by a fire and rescue authority in preparing information for a takeover bid.
Amendments 170, 171 and 172 all deal with the consultation process. Amendment 170 would require full consideration of people’s views. Amendment 171 would restrict the scope of the consultation to residents who are served by the relevant fire and rescue service. Amendment 172 would make workers and fire and rescue authorities statutory consultees. Amendment 180 would ensure that the panel the Home Secretary used to guide her through a business case was genuinely independent.
Amendments 173, 177 and 178 all deal with who must consent before a takeover can be approved. Amendment 173 would require the consent of local authorities, and amendment 177 would require local people to approve a takeover by a referendum. We have offered a compromise in amendment 178, which would require the approval of either the local authority or the local people. Either way, there must be local consent through a referendum or through the locally elected representatives.
I have outlined a lot of issues, but then again, there are a lot of problems with the Government’s proposals. I shall start with amendment 174 and the grounds on which the Home Secretary is to make her decisions, before I address the process. The amendment would ensure that the Secretary of State does not allow PCCs to take over control of a fire and rescue service unless it is in the interests of public safety. I tabled it because, as currently drafted, the Bill states that when the Secretary of State decides whether to allow a fire and rescue service to come under the control of a PCC, she must do so
“in the interests of economy, efficiency and effectiveness…or…in the interests of public safety”.
The amendment is small, but its impact would be substantial. It would prevent the Secretary of State from making her decision on whether to allow a fire and rescue service to come under the control of a PCC solely in the interests of economy, efficiency and effectiveness, to ensure that it is also in the interests of public safety. Who could possibly object to that? As the Minister is in one of his collaborative moods, I expect that he will accept the amendment with gusto, because he will want to ensure that the interests of public safety are truly served.
I know I have made these arguments before, but it is really important to make our arguments as we go through the Bill, so I shall do so again, albeit briefly. The decision to allow PCCs to take over fire and rescue services must not be allowed to become a trade-off between economy, efficiency and effectiveness on the one hand and the interests of public safety on the other. If PCCs are to take over fire and rescue services, the interests of public safety should be paramount. There should be no other interest—certainly not the Conservative party manifesto.
Under the existing proposals, if the takeover is in the interests of economy, efficiency and effectiveness, that is enough to satisfy the Secretary of State’s requirements. That is simply not good enough for the fire service, and it is certainly not good enough for the general public. I am glad to see that the Government have recognised that consideration must be given to both efficiency and effectiveness, but I am concerned that they have once again misunderstood the meaning of efficiency. I reiterate that Sir Ken Knight stated:
“Efficiency does not just mean doing the same for less, nor is it just about one-off cashable savings. It is an entire approach to service delivery, achieving the best possible service for the public.”
I would hope all of us in this room can agree on that.
Mr Kevan Jones
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government are arguing that local people should have a say in electing a police and crime commissioner, while at the same time they are giving the Secretary of State powers to impose on an area a set of arrangements in which local people would have no say at all? It is another example of the Government looking both ways—they talk about devolution, but now they are talking about centralisation.
Lyn Brown
That is absolutely right. It is not a localist agenda at all.
Amendment 181 would require a police and crime commissioner to pay the costs incurred by a fire and rescue authority in preparing information for a takeover bid. The Bill places a statutory duty on the PCC and fire and rescue authority to work together in the preparation of a takeover proposal, although not as equal partners. The process is to be led by PCCs, and the fire and rescue authorities will merely be duty-bound to co-operate. The amendment is intended to clarify who will pay the costs of preparing the proposal.
Ensuring that proposals are put together to the desired standard when putting forward the case for PCC takeover of fire and rescue authorities will of course take time, and providing the information needed to prepare a proposal will inevitably carry a cost. The costs include everything from staffing and research costs to stationery and paperwork. Paragraph 2 of proposed new schedule A1, which schedule 1 would add to the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004, sets out that a fire and rescue authority must provide information and documentation at a PCC’s request. That makes it clear that the application process could easily prove very costly to a fire and rescue authority.
The schedule places duties on fire and rescue authorities, but gives them no powers in return. For example, while a fire and rescue authority must co-operate with a PCC and provide him or her with documentation and support, the fire and rescue authority is given no corresponding powers whatever in return. I find that quite astonishing. Fire and rescue authorities have a legal responsibility to oversee the strategic direction and policy of their local fire service. How can they possibly carry out that duty if they are not even allowed to ask for documentation on staffing, finance and plans from the person who plans to take over the fire and rescue service?
In response to the Government’s proposed process, amendment 181 would place responsibility on the PCC to pay the costs incurred in producing a takeover proposal. There are two good reasons for that. First, as the PCC is actively seeking to take over responsibility for the fire and rescue authority, it is fair that those costs fall on them. Secondly, PCCs have larger budgets than fire and rescue authorities. They are therefore presumably better staffed and better able to absorb costs. If PCCs are not to be responsible for the costs, the Government need to work out how they will fund what could be a fairly costly process, especially when our fire and rescue services are under the cosh from spending cuts.
Mr Kevan Jones
I know that this issue will be considered later, because the Government have tabled amendments on it, but if we are to get a full idea of efficiency, one of the tricky areas is unpicking fire authorities’ budgets. To give an example, in Northumberland one PCC covers two fire authorities. One, Tyne and Wear, raises its fire budget by precept and the other is part of the county council. Does my hon. Friend recognise that unpicking those budgets will be a hugely expensive exercise?
Lyn Brown
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is why East and West Sussex fire authorities failed to merge when both wanted to do so—it was impossible to unpick one of their budgets, and the Government were demanding back £2 million of the local authority’s money. That completely floored the opportunity to do something that both fire and rescue authorities wanted. They could not do it because it was too expensive.
The other point I would make to my hon. Friend, who is absolutely right, is that many of the fire and rescue services that are integrated within a local authority structure have already found back-office cost savings. Their emergency services departments are fully integrated into the fire service. If fire services are dragged out and given to the PCC, that will have a massive cost for many of those local authorities, which will find themselves short in the pocket, just like in the case of the East and West Sussex merger.
Perhaps more presciently, being given responsibility to pay the costs of any takeover may stop police and crime commissioners from using the risk of cost escalation as a means of coercing fire and rescue authorities to support their takeover bid. The Government’s proposal is a recipe for hostile takeovers. We can imagine a situation arising under the Bill where a PCC requests that a fire and rescue authority produce a constantly escalating amount of information and documentation. As it does so, costs will spiral for the fire and rescue authority, possibly to saturation point. There may come a time when the fire and rescue authority decides it is no longer viable to continue paying such costs simply for the creation of a proposal and agrees to a takeover in order to stop haemorrhaging funds. The Government have been worried about the use of freedom of information requests as a deliberate tactic to burden public institutions, so they should be receptive to my argument and the picture I am painting.
Amendment 181 would take away PCCs’ ability to abuse their power, but it would also take away any fire and rescue authority’s suspicion that that might be happening. That would not only avoid PCCs coercing fire and rescue authorities but make fire and rescue authorities more receptive to working together with PCCs in putting together proposals. It would help to mitigate any conflict of interest. If the Minister is truly interested in collaboration between our emergency services—frankly, I doubt it—he ought to support it.
The amendment would solve two problems. It would clear up the ambiguity around who will pay for costs incurred in putting together proposals and help to mitigate the potential for hostile takeovers by PCCs when the fire and rescue authority—
Jack Dromey
On a point of order, Mr Howarth. This part of the Bill is too important to rush, so I propose to the Government that we take this afternoon to deal properly with legitimate concerns. I also ask that the Minister gives a considered response this afternoon to the powerful points that the shadow Fire Minister is making.
The Chair
The timing of debate on this part of the Bill is a matter for the usual channels. I am sure that the Opposition Whip will make that point to his opposite number, but that is a matter for them. Whether the Minister chooses to speak is a matter for him, not for the Chair, but I am sure he has heard what the hon. Gentleman has said.
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Faulty Electrical Imports
(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the importation of faulty electrical goods.
May I say what an absolute pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies? I am very pleased to see you in the Chair today, and you may be aware that I am speaking today as the recently elected chair of the all-party parliamentary group on home electrical safety.
Today we take electricity for granted. Unlike gas, it is everywhere; it is in every room in our homes. Electricity created a United Kingdom that was able to shake off the cobwebs of the first industrial revolution. Today, electricity supports the economy, provides jobs, helps British businesses, and is used for practical and recreational purposes in homes across the country. However, I am not here to give a historical lecture on the value of electricity.
As I say, we take electricity for granted. However, in taking it for granted, we often forget its power and perhaps more importantly its danger. This debate is about how we make electricity and its use through electrical products safer in this country. Often, however, safety is being undermined by cheap, poorly constructed, substandard or blatantly counterfeit electrical goods. All our constituents are at risk from electric shock; from a fire in their home that is caused by one of these products; or even from death.
I will focus today on several issues: the importation of counterfeit and substandard products; their sale, which is often via the internet; the safety of legitimate electrical products; and enforcement of the law.
How do we prevent these faulty items from appearing in the marketplace? How do we help to protect British businesses and consumers? A UK charity, Electrical Safety First, which has been of great support to me in preparing for this debate, campaigns to improve awareness of how to use electricity and electrical products safely, and I sincerely commend its efforts in that regard. It has informed me that across the country around 70 deaths each year are caused by electricity, which is more than one death per week. Sadly, these deaths are usually not reported in the media, unlike deaths from gas. Incidents involving gas cause headlines, even though they kill only around 18 people each year. Electrical Safety First has also informed me that each year about 350,000 people suffer some form of electrical accident in their homes. Of course, many of these accidents will be caused by the misuse of electricity, but many others will happen because people have been sold a product that is either substandard or blatantly counterfeit.
Electricity is being exploited by rogue individuals who sell substandard or counterfeit electrical goods to UK consumers. This trend is being fuelled by the internet and a lack of monitoring of sales: sales from well-known websites; sales from fake websites that are not based in the UK but appear to be; and sales through fulfilment houses, which are based in the UK.
My interest in this subject began following the tragic case of one of my constituents, Linda Merron, who sadly died as a result of a fire in her home in March 2015. The Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service said that the fire was caused by a faulty electrical product—an electrical air freshener that was bought by Linda through eBay. Linda lost her life because of a small imported electrical item from China that had enormous and tragic consequences for her and her family.
Such a tragedy could quite easily happen to any one of us. Many homes throughout the UK will have electrical products in use that are either substandard or counterfeit. When I talk of a substandard product, I am talking about those products that are poorly designed or constructed, that could even have live parts openly accessible and that could cause a fire. When I speak of counterfeit electrical goods, they are not just almost always substandard but actually mimic a major brand’s products. Often they look identical, including having identical packaging, and consumers are frequently unaware that they are dangerous, both to themselves and to UK businesses, which will lose out because of the trade in fake goods.
Of course, there is legislation that should have ensured that that particular item in Linda’s home was safe to use, and all imported items should comply with that legislation. But are the laws working? Have they kept up with the development of the internet? Are they stopping faulty items from being imported through the major internet shopping sites? I do not believe that they are. I say to the Minister that I am no expert when it comes to the legislation and I am sure that he is not either, because it can get rather technical. However, I understand that the Electrical Equipment (Safety) Regulations 1994, which is a mouthful to say, the Plugs and Sockets etc (Safety) Regulations 1994, and the General Product Safety Regulations 2005 exist to ensure the safety of the public and to help to prevent faulty electrical products from circulating in the UK market.
I appreciate the response given to me in July 2015 by the Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise when I tabled a written question on the efficacy of the Plugs and Sockets etc (Safety) Regulations 1994 in regulating online trading of electrical products. I was informed that the Government believe that those regulations continue to act as a practical and robust means of keeping both unsafe electrical products and those that do not have a safe means of connection to standard UK power sockets out of the UK market. But how would Linda Merron and all those individuals who buy items online know that? After finding items that are not appropriate for use in the UK, that are substandard, that cause injury or even tragic deaths, I ask: is the legislation robust enough to prevent tragedies such as the death of Linda Merron?
In fact, it is not just substandard and faulty items that are a concern. Counterfeit electrical goods are now big business. They are sold openly online, often through sites such as Amazon, Marketplace, eBay and Alibaba, a site I recently discovered that sells job lots of items to UK-based buyers, who then sell them on.
Electrical Safety First published its report into the increase of counterfeit electrical goods, “A shocking rip off”, in November last year, just before the main season for buying electricals online—what we now commonly call Black Friday or Cyber Monday. The Minister will know that counterfeit electrical goods present a threat to the consumer, undermine UK business and legitimate manufacturers, and can be very dangerous, posing a risk of causing fire or serious electric shock—even electrocution. I agree with the report’s view that it has never been easier for counterfeit electrical products to enter the UK marketplace.
We need to recognise that the internet is fuelling the growth in the sale of faulty items, with sellers appearing, then disappearing, in quick succession. Also, legitimate sales websites, such as Amazon, Marketplace and eBay, are falling foul of these unscrupulous sellers, as are Facebook and other social media channels. Faulty items are being sold openly.
I am not suggesting to the Minister that the Government should regulate the internet—certainly not—but those companies that facilitate these sales must do more to prevent dangerous, substandard and counterfeit electrical goods from being sold in the first place. They know who the sellers are—they are their own customers—but what are they doing to stem the flow? More than £90 million is now spent on counterfeit and substandard products each year, and in 2013-14 customs officials detained 21,000 consignments of fake goods at UK borders.
That is all part of the huge increase in the number of counterfeit, substandard or faulty products being imported into the UK. Over the last three years, there has been an increase in the use of social media to advertise these products. According to Electrical Safety First, a quarter of people interviewed said that they had seen fake products being openly advertised on social media websites. Furthermore, 24% had knowingly bought a counterfeit product and 21% had done so to save money.
Those activities are damaging British businesses and costing jobs, and big brands—some of the most popular of which are NutriBullet, BaByliss, ghd, Dyson and Apple—are suffering from the might of the counterfeiters. Electrical Safety First mentions in its report that it obtained a fake NutriBullet through eBay as part of its research. When a locked rotor test—a test that simulates something such as nuts or a mass of ice jamming in the blender—was carried out, the fake appliance caught fire. That potentially would have caused a fire in someone’s kitchen.
Hair straighteners are commonly counterfeited, with a number of the premier brands, particularly ghd, faked. A genuine item usually retails for £100, but counterfeits are on sale on market stalls and on the internet for between £30 and £70. I have seen the packaging, and can testify to the fact that fake ghds are packaged so well that it is very difficult to tell the difference between counterfeit and genuine.
Fake Apple products are probably the most popular of the counterfeits entering the UK, chargers in particular. I am certain that most hon. Members, probably unknowingly, have in their possession a counterfeit Apple charger, and I put my hands up and say, “I know that I have”. According to Electrical Safety First, those were the items that were shown to be most dangerous during testing. I am told that a genuine charger contains more than 60 individual components, while a counterfeit has at best 25, and some have as few as 19. The charger casings are also a cause for concern, as they are often only clipped together and not properly sealed, meaning that the user can access live parts and that moisture can enter the product. During testing, the products also had a greater probability of heating up and catching fire. The plastic used in counterfeits is often not the polycarbonate used in the genuine article but an acrylonitrile butadiene styrene—ABS—polymer, which is less resilient and has no fire retardant properties. The London fire brigade reports that the material gives off a thick, toxic smoke when burning, which poses additional hazards.
Therefore, is the legislation robust? Has it kept up with sales over the internet? I do not believe it has. I hope that the Minister will consider working with the all-party parliamentary group on how we all can not just raise awareness with our constituents but come forward with a strategy to tackle the issues, working with the likes of eBay and Amazon to prevent the sale of the items. Clearly, it is not possible for the average consumer to tell the difference between a genuine and a counterfeit article. Consumers do not have X-ray machines to tell them what components are inside—although, worryingly, I understand that you can buy an X-ray machine from Alibaba. That is how ridiculous the situation with online sales has become.
Of course, trading standards, prevention and enforcement are a big part of the solution. City and County of Swansea Council, with which I have spoken at length, has had its own difficulties with fulfilment houses that operate locally and sell on substandard and counterfeit goods but, given the funding cuts, it now has to prioritise the most dangerous articles to remove them from sale. It was only at Christmas that we saw the significant problems of house fires caused by substandard hoverboards imported into the UK—my assistant fell off one and broke her wrist. That is why we need experts working at ports and at airports such as Heathrow, where much of the mail with items bought on the internet enters the country.
The Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise helpfully replied to me on 13 July last year, through a written answer, when I asked what steps the Government were taking to prevent counterfeit electrical products from being sold in the UK, to protect customers from electrical accidents:
“In February this year the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills pledged an extra £400,000 to help trading standards officers prevent dangerous goods being sold in the UK, and this includes £182,000 for its ports and borders project which is improving surveillance”.
That is welcome, but is the level of funding really enough? Can the Minister confirm whether the Secretary of State intends to extend the funding, given the cost to UK businesses if the goods enter the market? Trading standards are essential, including on the frontline at ports, but what about online? Is the Minister able to explain what support the Government are providing to officers for enforcement regarding the internet? What help can the Department give to trading standards to assist them in working closer with the likes of Amazon and eBay and to do more to remove offending electrical items that either are not compliant or are fake? How does he intend to tackle the scourge of fulfilment houses?
I appreciate that the Department has recently carried out a review of trading standards, but I believe that more needs to be done, with investment in officers who can look online, and work with the likes of eBay and Amazon to prevent the items from being sold in the first place. Perhaps the Minister can outline specifically what the review considers. If knives, pornography and other dubious articles are not allowed to be sold on the websites, the same should apply to substandard electrical goods that can kill.
I am mindful that the debate is about the importation of faulty electrical products. It is a great sadness that many appliances that used to be made in the UK are now made overseas. That manufacturing provided significant employment for our constituents, particularly in Wales—I believe my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones) will touch upon that in his contribution. I am certain that when the goods were produced here they gave local people skills and jobs, and they benefited both the local community and the companies that were making the components in the United Kingdom, not in countries such as China. How do we know that the component supply chain is of good quality and, most importantly, is safe?
I note that the Department recently published the Government’s response to Lynn Faulds Wood’s review on product safety, but will the Government’s direction address what Lynn sought to achieve? Lynn has been at the forefront of campaigning on product safety, particularly on electrical goods, since the 1980s when she coined the phrase “potential death trap”. With recent events with Whirlpool tumble-dryer fires and the importation of other faulty electrical products, are the Government seeing the issues as a priority?
Hon. Members on both sides of the House have recently raised concerns on the issue, and my hon. Friend the Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) wrote to me as chair of the all-party parliamentary group about her concerns for the safety of her constituents and asked what action was being taken. The Minister knows that Whirlpool has issued a safety notice on some of its tumble dryers, but it is not calling for a product recall. I do not seem to have seen a Government response to the concerns, so can the Minister give us reassurances today about public safety and the recall system in this case? Is it acceptable that consumers will have to wait such a long time for repairs to their imported machines? He will know that the Chartered Trading Standard Institute has said that 11-month waits are unacceptable when the machines are potentially dangerous.
Can we also ask therefore whether manufacturers in the UK—not just Whirlpool—can have absolute confidence that components in these appliances are of sufficient quality? What market surveillance is being done to protect consumers, and what traceability is there of components in appliances that are manufactured abroad but sold in the UK? What comparison is there between recalls of goods manufactured in the UK and recalls of those manufactured elsewhere? Those are a few questions that the Department needs carefully to consider.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
My hon. Friend is opening the debate powerfully. Two years ago, the House was dealing with the Consumer Rights Bill. I tabled amendments and new clauses to the Bill, precisely to address the issues of the safety of electrical goods and recalls, which were well supported by the then Member of Parliament for East Lothian. However, the Government tried to say that there was no issue—there was no gap, there was no problem—despite all the figures and all the evidence showing that there was.
Carolyn Harris
I appreciate my hon. Friend’s comments, and I am sure any speech he makes later will reflect his thoughts.
Members of the House can help through the APPG on home electrical safety to find solutions and raise awareness. I am not sure whether the Minister has seen a counterfeit electrical product up close, but I hope he will join the APPG later this year. We have an event planned that will look at examples of counterfeit electrical goods that have been gathered. Perhaps then he will understand better.
In conclusion, the importation of faulty electrical products is an increasing issue, fuelled by the internet. It is costing lives. How many more incidents will happen before action is taken? How will trading standards be able to tackle the issue in an era of increasing change and with cuts to officer posts? I hope the Minister will give reassurance today that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is treating the importation of faulty electrical goods into the UK seriously. Government must have a role to play, even if it is only one of co-ordination. Action is needed now to protect our constituents and businesses in the UK. I hope he intends to outline how he can help us to achieve that.
Several hon. Members rose—
Geraint Davies (in the Chair)
We have a limited amount of time. Front Benchers will start to contribute at half-past 10, so it would be helpful if Members can try to keep their comments down to around five or six minutes.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) for securing this important debate. She is the chair of the all-party group on home electrical safety, of which I am also a member.
The importance of the subject cannot be overstated. In my constituency in South Lanarkshire, which is home to the headquarters of the Scottish fire and rescue service, 214 house fires were caused by faulty electrical items in the past five years alone. That accounts for 13% of all accidental house fires during that period. Further south, the London fire brigade estimates that there is, on average, one fire in the capital caused by faulty white goods every day. Faulty and substandard electrical goods pose a real safety hazard. They can overheat, catch fire or cause electric shocks.
The problem of counterfeit electrical goods is becoming more prevalent. Modern technology has changed consumer habits and counterfeit goods have greater and more widespread availability. Research from the charity Electrical Safety First shows that a quarter of people have seen fake products openly advertised on popular social media sites. Thousands of items are now advertised every day on such sites, which have fast become counterfeit marketplaces. Perhaps the rise in social media is a key factor in the huge increase in the number of counterfeit and substandard electrical goods coming into the UK. I would like to see the Government working closely with social media websites to counteract the sale of such goods. Trading standards faces increasing digital challenges, and it is only through working with sites acting as digital marketplaces that proper enforcement can take place. There has been a boom in the trade in counterfeit versions of must-have electronics. The number of fake mobile phones seized has risen by more than 50%.
The message that buying counterfeit electrical items is a risk not worth taking does not seem to be getting through. The demand for fake items continues to rise despite the risk to personal safety, which can sometimes prove deadly. Without a more accurate picture of the problem, however, it is difficult to know how it can best be tackled. I hope the Minister will consider conducting an assessment of the number of counterfeit electrical goods being imported into the UK, so that the full extent is laid bare. We need a greater understanding not only of the scale of the problem, but of the trends in popular items and marketplaces. A real strategy needs to be brought forward, and the trading standards review must include consideration of online shopping and the importation of faulty electrical goods into the UK. One thing that the hon. Member for Swansea East did not mention was that many people are now buying retro items online. They are a must-have, but the problem is that we do not know whether such items adhere to electrical safety.
Trading standards has become incredibly localised, and it is time to rethink that and ask how best we can enforce against illegal sales of counterfeit and substandard electrical goods, particularly over the internet. In addition to enforcement, public awareness should be utilised as a key method to combat the trade in such items. We are all no doubt aware of the craze last Christmas for so-called hoverboards, which the hon. Lady mentioned, and the many reported occurrences of fires starting while those devices were charging. Supply chains are increasingly globalised, and when such product crazes with huge demand come around, substandard products can be distributed to consumers much faster than ever before. It is important that consumers are fully aware of the risks posed. The problem with buying fake electrical items is that people do not know what they are going to get. There are records of people being electrocuted and seriously burnt by fake phone chargers.
We need to get the message across that buying counterfeit electrical items is a risk not worth taking, as it could risk a person’s safety or worse, their life. According to research, about 2.6 million adults in the UK say they have knowingly ignored a recall notice. Some 77% of people say they would be more likely to respond if they understood the potential dangers. More work clearly needs to be done to better educate people on the risks, which underlines the need for a modern approach to trading standards to complement the traditional localised model.
I hope that the Minister will respond to some of the points I have raised. In particular, I would like some answers to the following questions. Will he commit to conducting an assessment of the number of counterfeit electrical goods being imported into the UK? That would be the first step towards supporting trading standards in tackling the problem. I also wish to see an undertaking to subsequently bring forward a strategy to deal with the issue. Can he provide more detail on how online sales of counterfeit electrical goods through social media channels are tackled? Do the Government work with the likes of Facebook to counteract such sales? If not, will he commit to looking at that as a priority?
How will the Government ensure that all electrical goods sold to UK consumers, including online, are compliant with British electrical standards, such as the Plugs and Sockets etc. (Safety) Regulations 1994? Will the Government ask the large online auction sites to work with sellers and have a charter mark for safe electrical goods? Will the Minister give an overview of the activities undertaken to raise public awareness of the dangers posed by counterfeit electrical goods? What is being done to foster greater understanding of the risks of electrocution and fire from buying electrical goods that have not been built to a sufficient standard? It is our duty as parliamentarians to highlight the dangers and to do our best to keep our constituents safe. I thank the Minister for listening, and I look forward to his response.
Several hon. Members rose—
Geraint Davies (in the Chair)
Order. The opening speech was 20 minutes, and I will need to allow about 10 minutes for each of the three spokespersons at the end, so Members have about five minutes each.
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I am pleased to take part in this important debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing it. As I mentioned before the sitting, I apologise for not being able to stay until the end. I have to attend a Public Bill Committee.
I, too, am a member of the all-party group on home electrical safety, and I come to the debate because of the historical links that my constituency had with electrical appliance manufacturing for many years. I would therefore like to focus my remarks on issues to do with product safety and how the importation of electrical products may be damaging business and undermining consumer confidence in the UK.
In Merthyr Tydfil, we have a proud history in the manufacture of washing machines. The Hoover factory opened in Pentrebach in my constituency in 1948 as part of the Labour Government’s work to ensure manufacturing advances in the UK after the war. Hoover’s major global expansion saw factories making washing machines in Merthyr Tydfil and its famous vacuum cleaners being manufactured in Scotland. Hoover soon became the market leader in the UK because the products were made here to high standards and were not imported.
Hoover’s UK manufacturing in Merthyr Tydfil gave people jobs for life. Many generations of my constituents worked in the factory. In 1973, Hoover’s 25th anniversary in the town, 5,000 people were employed making washing machines, tumble dryers and dishwashers. Perhaps bizarrely, in the 1980s, as the Minister may recall, the Sinclair C5 vehicle was made in Merthyr Tydfil, although that mode of transport had a quick demise. Manufacturing in the UK had reached its peak, unfortunately. Tragically, it has been allowed to drift away and we now rely on imports.
On 14 March 2009, manufacturing came to an end in Merthyr Tydfil with Hoover’s closure, which meant that 337 people lost their jobs. The site is now virtually empty. The headquarters remain, along with a warehouse facility. Despite the closure and the decision to move production to the far east, Hoover is still revered in Merthyr Tydfil by its former workforce. Appliances were built locally, giving jobs to the local economy and benefiting people’s lives.
I do not want to focus just on Hoover’s decision, as devastating a blow as it was in 2009. Many other manufacturers have decided to send production overseas and now import electrical goods into the UK. How can we be sure of the credibility of the component supply chain to large companies, and how do we ensure proper quality of the finished product and that it is built to last? When production was in Merthyr Tydfil, Hoover benefited from local component manufacturers, which in turn benefited from Hoover. Hoover had greater control over the supply chain and was able to assess whether components were of sufficient quality.
My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East has already mentioned the issues with tumble dryers that many of our constituents face. Given the wet weather in Wales, many of my constituents rely on tumble dryers, many of them made by Whirlpool, which owns the Hotpoint and Indesit brands. As we know, Whirlpool has issued a safety notice for its large air-venting tumble dryers, owing to a fire risk. The Minister will be aware of the ongoing issues, as the matter was raised in Business, Innovation and Skills questions last week. The manufacturer has advised that the machines should not be left unsupervised. Some 4.3 million machines need to be fixed, so it is clearly an enormous task for the company.
I understand that our constituents will have to wait potentially 11 months or more for appropriate repairs to be made to the faulty imported appliances. How many fires could break out in that time? Can the Minister give us an assurance as to what his Department is doing? Has he, or have his ministerial colleagues, met Whirlpool to discuss the issue?
What is even worse is that the company is trying to sell its customers who contact them with concerns a new tumble dryer for £99 that is also subject to safety concerns. As my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East highlighted, the Government tasked Lynn Faulds Wood with reviewing product safety, and the Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise said in the Government’s response to that review that she takes the issue very seriously. I am pleased to note that. However, the Whirlpool issue is a key case that needs to be given serious attention, and quickly. The UK charity Electrical Safety First, which campaigns to protect consumers from electrical accidents in the home, has provided a briefing to the all-party group.
Given the time available, I want to move on and flag up the issue of hoverboards, which the trading standards department in my constituency, along with others across the country, has recently dealt with. As the two previous speakers have highlighted, we know that more than 15,000—88%—were unsafe and detained at the border, but I am concerned about those that got through. That issue had much publicity across the country at the end of last year. Some of the stories we have heard are deeply worrying, and I want the Minister to consider what more can be done to raise awareness of the issue.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a challenge to do five minutes, but I will do my best, Mr Davies. I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing this debate. She focused comprehensively on the subject.
I think it is important that we give thought to the 13 people killed in Brussels on the metro and at the airport, and to the many others who have been injured. Prayerfully, physically and emotionally, we commend them all in our hearts and thoughts at this time.
To come back to the debate, 24% of household fires in the past five years were caused by electrics, as hon. Members have said. Irresponsible behaviour and accidents can happen, but the majority of cases are due to faulty electrical equipment. People’s lives and livelihoods are literally at stake as a result of the trade in faulty or illicit electrical goods. In December, my hon. Friend the Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) tabled an early-day motion, which I was happy to sign, urging families and friends to take extra care and be aware of electrical safety, especially in the homes of elderly relatives and friends, during the Christmas period. We had a chance to highlight the issue at a reception here. It is important to use our positions as public representatives to raise awareness of the risks and urge people to take heed of warnings, but, no matter how aware people are of the risks, there is still the problem of electrical faults that happen without any human error on the part of the consumer.
The hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), who is no longer in his place, has been a champion for consumer safety and I commend him for his hard work. More than £90 million is spent on counterfeit products each year, and in 2013-14 customs officials detained some 21,000 consignments of fake goods at UK borders. In just one operation alone, almost 170,000 dangerous and counterfeit goods were stopped from entering the UK by border staff at Dover docks in one of the biggest ever hauls at the port.
As hon. Members have mentioned, the manufacturing base in the United Kingdom has long eroded. Manufacturing has gone to the far east, China and eastern European countries, where the same levels of control are not as apparent as they are back home. That has been a disappointment not only because of the jobs that have been lost, but because the quality of goods cannot be secured in the way that we would like.
There has been a huge increase in the number of counterfeit and substandard electrical goods coming into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. These counterfeit products follow the trends in must-have items. The must-have item is incredible; everybody must have it irrespective of what it is. The number of fake mobile phones seized has risen by more than 50%, as have other top electrical fakes, including hair straighteners, which I do not have to use, and games. Those are simply examples of things that people want. Despite campaigns to heighten awareness of the risks of counterfeit electrical goods, 24% of people have knowingly bought a counterfeit product; 21% would consider buying one to save money; and 16% do not think counterfeit products would put them at risk.
Clearly, the public have to be educated. They have to understand what might happen. By and large, if they buy it cheap, they buy a problem as well. Is legislation robust enough? Shortly, I will come on to the things that trading standards have said we must do. We need a two-pronged approach to continue and strengthen the campaigns to raise awareness, but the Government must have a role in this, too. I am pleased to see the Minister in his place. I know we will get a robust response from him, and also from the shadow Minister as well.
The UK’s electrical safety experts, Electrical Safety First, want to see a review or an assessment of the number of counterfeit electrical goods being imported into the UK and a strategy from the UK Government to support trading standards to tackle the problem. Electrical Safety First is largely considered the most reputable in the sector, so it is worth listening to its recommendations, which are important. It is calling for a proper assessment of the number of fulfilment houses and their involvement with the distribution of counterfeit/substandard goods; ensuring that all electrical goods sold to UK consumers, including those sold online, are compliant with British electrical standards such as the Plugs and Sockets etc. (Safety) Regulations 1994; asking the large online sales auction sites to work with sellers and have a charter mark for safe electrical goods; and ensuring that the trading standards review includes consideration of online shopping and the importation of faulty electricals into the UK and how trading standards can enforce against illegal sales of counterfeit and substandard electrical goods.
We need to address the issue of eBay purchase when the driver for the person on eBay is what is cheap rather than what is best or safe. Electrical Safety First also recommends that the Government ensure the product safety recall system is robust, and it supports the setting up of the steering group by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to ensure a way forward to protect consumers. Those are not unreasonable requests. Indeed, further to my earlier point, there is only so much that raising awareness and taking care can do. Accidents and incidents still happen that could be prevented by better Government action to tackle the issue of faulty and counterfeit electrical products.
Parliamentarians need to come together and raise awareness in all constituencies throughout the country, and the relevant bodies, both public and private, need to play their part, but it is also clear that further Government action is needed. There have been fatalities as a result of counterfeit and faulty electric goods. Awareness campaigns can only do so much. We need action from the Government to protect citizens from the harm of counterfeit goods and action to bring to justice those who import and distribute these goods.
Several hon. Members rose—
Geraint Davies (in the Chair)
Order. Thank you, Mr Shannon, for your words about Brussels. I am sure that all our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and the people of Brussels. I call Carol Monaghan.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, and I thank the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) for securing it. Unlike her, I will give a bit of a history lesson. The first people who are documented as having dealt with electricity were the ancient Greeks—Members are going to enjoy this.
Carol Monaghan
The ancient Greeks realised that when they rubbed pieces of amber with a cloth to polish them they got sparks. They had no idea why, but they quite enjoyed the effect. In ancient Greek, amber is called elektron, which is where we get the word “electricity” from.
Some big names in electricity include Alessandro Volta, Luigi Galvani and Benjamin Franklin—they all played around with electricity. I mention those greats of electricity because none of those scientists had any idea of how electricity was going to be used. It was used for after-dinner entertainment—for example, small experiments were conducted instead of having a conjuror. The Victorians found some uses for electricity, one of the first of which was lighting. They realised that if they had a table cloth with electrical elements running through it, they could plug the prongs of a table lamp directly into the table cloth and light the dinner table. That sounds great—until a drink is spilled on to the table.
We can all laugh at that, but such ridiculous—possibly very creative—inventions were no more dangerous than some of the goods that are currently on sale. When current goes through any wire it generates heat. We need the correct flexes to cope with the current going through them. That is why we have different flexes for different purposes. One of the problems with counterfeit goods is that they do not necessarily have the correct flex for the appliance, which means that when the appliance draws current the flex can heat up and melt, causing a fire. That is one of the big problems with counterfeit goods.
For consumers, price is often a great driver. I just did a quick check of the internet. I do not have an iPad charger with me today. Were I to go to a local retailer and buy a genuine iPad charger, it would cost me £15 for the plug and £15 for the wire—a total cost of £30. On Amazon today, I can get a charger and wire that looks like an Apple charger for £8.99, including postage and packaging. That is what drives many consumers to take risks—especially low-income consumers who are trying to get goods that they think are going to do the job for them. Genuine retailers, especially those selling things as simple as a charger, must look at their pricing. I am not suggesting that they can produce an iPad charger for a knock-down price of £8.99, but £30 to charge my iPad seems a little excessive.
Sites such as Amazon and eBay should take responsibility for the goods sold on their sites. It is not just about iPad chargers. The hon. Member for Swansea East mentioned ghd straighteners. Let us say a genuine set comes in at £100. I might want to buy a set without realising that they are counterfeit: I might think it is just a good deal. I might buy them, not at a market for £30, but online for a “Today’s special deal” of £90. That is close enough to the right price for people to think the straighteners are genuine. They pay the money, thinking they got a good deal, but in fact they got a death trap. Online marketplace sites must take responsibility for the goods and sellers on their sites, and the Government must take action against retailers whenever the goods they are selling are not up to standard.
Finally—despite my history lesson, Mr Davies, I am keeping to the time limit—it is important to raise public awareness. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) said, it is not enough just to talk about the recall of particular items. Tell the public the reasons why and what can go wrong. Give them photos. Make them aware and educate them so that they can make informed decisions about the goods they buy.
Several hon. Members rose—
Geraint Davies (in the Chair)
Order. Your timekeeping and history were commendable, Ms Monaghan. I call Jim Fitzpatrick.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing this important debate and thank her for her effective presentation of all the issues, many of which have also been covered by the colleagues who have followed her. I am happy to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan). We southsiders are always happy to learn from the north of the city and, having learned, take the lead and show the way. I will try to copy her timekeeping as well, Mr Davies.
I am secretary to the all-party group on fire safety and rescue. Several colleagues present are active in the group. The next meeting is at half-past 1 today, but I understand that colleagues might be conflicted given what will be going on in the Chamber at the same time. I express my appreciation to Rob Jervis-Gibbons and his colleagues at Electrical Safety First for their briefing for this debate. I do not intend to repeat the many issues raised so clearly and effectively by previous speakers, so I expect my contribution to be brief. I look forward to the responses from the Front-Bench spokespersons, especially that of the Minister, who this morning has to be not only the authentic voice of the Conservative party but its only voice. Given the importance that the rest of us attach to the debate, that is a wee bit sad. That is not a criticism of him or his Department. As has been articulated, we are all looking for reassurance on this matter.
My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East has raised the important issues: brand imitation, substandard products, the risks from online sales and unscrupulous sellers, and the ability of trading standards officers to respond to growing risks in the face of budget restraints and cuts. Additional risks are posed by consumers who do not respond to manufacturer recalls, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned. He cited the very worrying statistic that only 10% to 20% of recalled products are returned or repaired. ESF’s analysis found that consumers did not respond because they were worried that they would be targets for future marketing campaigns. Although that sounds strange, it has a realistic ring to it. Manufacturers have to address that worry.
Given the growing threat, I am interested to hear how the Government feel they are doing in protecting the public. As has been mentioned, ESF estimated the counterfeit trade to be worth £90 million in 2013-14—in that year alone, customs detained 21,000 consignments at UK borders. I have several questions for the Minister that are similar to those asked by the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier). In fact, I think some are the same as hers, which should save the Minister’s time. Hopefully he will be able to provide responses.
Do the Government believe that the ESF analysis covers the scope of the problem, or do they think it is far more serious? The lack of a proper assessment leads to concerns that perhaps the figures are even worse than those in the public domain. Do the Government have a strategy to support trading standards officers in tackling the problem? What efforts are the Government making to tackle online sales of dangerous products? What liaison has there been with online companies and social media sites?
When was the last review of the legislation covering these areas? As my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East said, and as ESF highlighted, the legislation is from 1994—well before the explosion of internet trading. Are the Government confident that the law as it stands is robust enough for the present day? Have they reviewed the recent trend of fires in domestic premises caused by electrical sources? If so, what evidence did they find? If not, will they do so in conjunction with the Minister for Policing, Fire, Criminal Justice and Victims?
I do not for a second question the Government’s intention; they take this matter very seriously. We simply seek reassurance that we are doing everything possible to ensure that the good people on the frontline have the resources and tools they need to do their job and protect society. As many colleagues know, I was in the London fire brigade for 23 years before I was elected to represent my constituency. Fire service personnel will always put themselves at risk to deal with fires, but despite the efficiency of the British fire service 70 people died. The fire brigade cannot protect everybody, so the Government must ensure that things do not get that far. The purpose of today’s debate is to ensure that matters do not come to such a tragic end. However consumers buy electrical goods in the UK, they must be able to do so in the confidence that they are not buying a product that could harm them or their family.
Geraint Davies (in the Chair)
Thank you for your brevity. To continue the melody of Celtic voices, I call Martin Docherty-Hughes.
Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
It is nice to see you in the Chair, Mr Davies. I am pleased to take part in this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing it. I must declare an interest: I was formerly the secretary of the Scottish Accident Prevention Council, so I am keenly aware of many of these issues. For the record, I have never used hair straighteners—faulty or otherwise.
Martin Docherty-Hughes
Households face the continuing challenges of squeezed incomes and rising prices for essential goods and services, so consumers are increasingly vulnerable to making distressed purchases. Many are tempted to buy fake and often faulty electrical goods. Like others, I am particularly worried about my constituents on low incomes. The elderly and others in disadvantaged situations are particularly susceptible to exploitation by unscrupulous businesses seeking to benefit from consumer vulnerabilities.
Inferior electrical goods pose a host of dangers to the public, and often leave behind a legacy of safety concerns and property damage, about which we have heard today. As other hon. Members highlighted, counterfeit electrical goods follow consumer trends—fake Fendi handbags cannot really injure people, but a faulty fake washing machine can kill people in their beds with smoke and fire.
Fake items often contain faulty parts that can overheat, catch fire or cause electric shocks. Like many other hon. Members, I have read the Electrical Safety First report, “A shocking rip off”, which found that a key reason why fakes are sold so cheaply is that they often have no short-cuts, lack specific components or contain substandard ones. According to the charity, the increasing sophistication of fake production means that often the only way of identifying items as counterfeit is by checking their internal components, but that is not on many of my constituents’ minds when they make a purchase, particularly if they do so online.
It has never been easier for counterfeit products to enter the UK marketplace, given the number of internet-based sales portals and social media marketplaces. Anyone with a bank account and internet access can import products from anywhere in the world. I do not want this debate to be about preventing them from doing so; that is not what we are talking about. At the same time, the resources of the agencies tasked with tackling the counterfeiting menace are being spread even more thinly, as alluded to a moment ago.
Faulty electrical products are thought to cause billions of pounds-worth of damage every year, both from the economic impact and from the fires and injuries they cause when they malfunction. Although the figures for fires caused directly by counterfeit electrical products are hard to come by, fires caused by electrical products are responsible for nearly 3,000 domestic house fires in Scotland alone per year. The average cost of a house fire is estimated to be about £44,500. Even if only a small proportion are due to faulty electrical goods, the direct financial impact is likely to be significant, leaving aside the human cost of such fires.
In my constituency—the one and only West Dunbartonshire—between 2009 and 2015, more than 11% of all accidental house fires were caused by faulty electrical items. I was further worried to learn that Citizens Advice Scotland reported a 17% increase in annual calls from consumers who have concerns about electrical products. Although much has already been done to tackle the importation of faulty electrical goods into Scotland and the rest of the UK, those figures show that there is a real need to fully understand the issue and to deal with it sooner rather than later. In liaison with partners, including Electrical Safety First, the Scottish trading standards services are working hard to identify and take robust enforcement action against the supplies of faulty electrical products.
In my constituency, West Dunbartonshire trading standards officers work tirelessly to protect consumers from imported and often unsafe electrical products. In the run-up to Christmas 2015, they prevented 1,000 non- compliant hoverboards—that ubiquitous item—from entering the UK. We have all read about the safety issues surrounding that newest fad gadget. In that case, it was deemed that the boards contained faulty plugs, cabling, chargers and batteries, which could have led to the devices overheating, exploding or catching fire.
Recently, the West Dunbartonshire trading standards office, like many other trading standards offices across the UK, has been contacted by worried consumers who have fire safety concerns about recalled tumble dryers. One of my constituents who has responded to the recall has been told that they will get their modification visit in May 2017. That is a scandal. They are supposed to continue to use the potentially dangerous product in the meantime or to take up the company’s generous offer of a new machine for £99 in place of modification.
The Scottish Government have proposed to the Smith commission that consumer protection be fully devolved to Scotland. I ask the Minister, why is it not? Why are we not helping consumer protection organisations to work together across the rest of the UK? More importantly, why are we not bringing consumer protection closer to the consumer?
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Davies. I thank all hon. Members who have spoken, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing this important debate. I pay tribute to the staff at Electrical Safety First—in particular, Wayne Mackay for the briefing that he gave all of us. I will do all I can to share it with members of the public, because it contains a lot of interesting information about electrical products that they would not necessarily know from comparing two items.
I also pay tribute to the Scottish fire and rescue service, which works with Electrical Safety First and does lots of community outreach work, including home fire safety visits to inform people about the risks in their own home and to draw attention to such items. They are free to members of the public in Scotland and are well worth doing. I pay tribute to the many trading standards officers around the country who work incredibly hard to highlight these issues. In Glasgow, a lot of work is going on in the Scottish Anti Illicit Trade Group and the Scottish National Markets Group. Glasgow’s scientific services department does much testing of these items, which is really important.
There has been an interesting change in the way that such items reach us over the years. Previously, we might have picked them up in a market or a small shop, but since the legislation was introduced in 1994 there has been a move to online shopping. At about that time, eBay and Amazon were founded. We could not have predicted the increase in the volume of online shopping and the way that trend changed over time. A lot of hon. Members have talked about that. When people buy things online, it is difficult to ascertain their quality and legitimacy. The legislation is ripe for review. We must address those issues, because those changes to the market could not have been anticipated in 1994 when the legislation was introduced. The work that has been done to highlight these various issues is very important. The hon. Member for Swansea East talked about monitoring these issues and the sale of such items, and I support her call for action. The Government must do something about this.
Although it is important that we all raise public awareness in our communities, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, that is not enough. We can raise awareness as much as we like, but without the legitimacy of legislation to crack down on traders on popular websites such as Amazon and eBay, we will be stuck. Nothing will help our consumers more than legislation. If illegitimate sellers suffer no penalty for what they are doing, they will continue to do it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) said that it was important to have a full investigation of trading standards throughout the UK to see where there are gaps and to ensure that people are protected equally around the country.
Another interesting issue is that of retro items, older electrical goods that people want to have in their homes but might fall foul of the legislation—perhaps they were made just before 1994, or are much older. Such items are being sold and kept in homes, although people might not realise the potential difficulties because of the safety standards that are not present.
Jim Shannon
Some of the advertising on eBay and Google advertises a genuine product. However, an Apple product cannot be genuine if it is only £2.89—let’s be honest. Perhaps the Government need to look at the advertising as well.
Alison Thewliss
The advertising issue is significant. During the speeches, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) and I were looking online at such advertising, and the products are all described as genuine. People should not be fooled into thinking that “genuine” means genuine in such cases, because they simply cannot be so.
The hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones) spoke passionately about the history of manufacturing in the country and in his constituency, with particular reference to the Hoover factory. That is a critical point: when we employed people locally in the UK to produce the goods, we all had a stake—we knew, or we could trace the supply chain back to, the people in the factories. Everyone had an interest in ensuring that the products or their components were safe and legitimate, because everyone knew who would be buying the end product. Producing locally has an impact—people know who will buy the products, and we can all feel more secure when we have a stake in their production.
Margaret Ferrier
I pay tribute to the people in my constituency, in Cambuslang, where we had a Hoover factory that started in 1946. As my hon. Friend said, people have a personal pride in what they produce. As soon as the manufacturing left the UK and went abroad, we had no safeguards as to quality. It is a bit like the steel industry today: we do not know what the quality of the steel coming into the UK is. More than 2,000 people in my constituency worked in the Hoover factory—I pay tribute to them. In fact, I thought that the word for a vacuum cleaner was a hoover, because it was so well known.
Alison Thewliss
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. A side issue is the unknown conditions in which those items are produced; we do not know the standards for the factories that staff are employed in and, often, stories in the media show factories to be a kind of sweatshop. People employed in such conditions do not have the same stake in ensuring a quality product at the end of the day. They are being exploited as much as consumers in this country are being exploited.
The hon. Member for Strangford mentioned the must-have items, and that they drive demand is an important point. People are persuaded to buy cheap and cut corners in order to meet the demand and to make their consumer choice.
We also need to think a bit more about the points about price, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West said. There is a cost involved in buying any product, but it seems that many of the big, legitimate companies retailing electrical goods know that too and they are putting a premium on many of their products; they are making a significant profit on these items and, as a result, people choose the cheaper route. The big retailers need to be a bit more responsible about their marketing and the price points they choose.
My hon. Friend also spoke passionately about the history of electrical items. It is absolutely true that electricity has always involved risks; the difference now is that we ought to have legislation in place to control them. In our era, we understand the risks—in particular, with physics teachers up and down the country, we understand a lot more about how electricity works, as well as its accompanying risks. We need to be a lot more careful about how we control electrical products in this country.
I am glad to welcome the contribution made by the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), who is a former firefighter of 23 years’ service. I served on the board of the Strathclyde fire and rescue service, which does a great deal of outreach work as well and would echo what he said about house fires. Firemen do not want to have to rescue people from house fires resulting from something that could have been prevented far further down the line.
There have been two serious house fires in Glasgow in the past week, and the people affected are very much in my thoughts and those of my colleagues in Glasgow. I do not yet know the cause of the house fires, but if there is a way to protect people and prevent house fires—as my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) said, they cause so much damage—given both the human and the financial cost, there is work that we must do.
On the matter being devolved to Scotland, work going on shows that there is a will in Scotland to tackle the issue of counterfeit goods. A lot of good practice is happening in Scotland, but we are mindful of the ports around the country—we are on an island and can control, to some degree, what comes in through our ports. I would like to see greater investment in that. As we see from media reports, when things are stopped in port, they can be taken out of the market altogether.
One other point to throw in is that people are now importers of goods themselves. They can get around the ports and so on by ordering things from abroad. A constituent of mine even ordered a Taser over the internet and had it delivered to his house—to be clear, he immediately took it to the police. If people can order something such as that, ordering a plug charger or something is pretty easy. I want to see more control over what we can order ourselves and over what can be imported.
Again, I thank the hon. Member for Swansea East for securing the debate.
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies.
I, too, associate myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) about the people in Brussels. Our thoughts are with them today.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing this important debate. I wish every success to her all-party group on home electrical safety. The issue is really significant, and in common with many Members throughout the House I pay tribute to Electrical Safety First, not only for its briefing but for the work it has done in the past, and I am sure will do in future, to highlight this important subject.
As we have heard, there is clearly a problem with the importation of faulty electrical goods, which seem to be flooding into the UK at the moment. As the hon. Members for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) and for Strangford said, however, we do not know how many electrical goods are being imported into the UK. I want to see an assessment of the amount, because what is caught at ports and borders is a small part of the overall number.
More than £90 million is spent on counterfeit products each year. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East, the issue is partly one of intellectual property—many of the goods imitate those of well-known manufacturers, which have spent years building their reputations and garnering good will. My hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones) spoke passionately about how the Hoover factory was integral to his constituency and about the pride people felt in that product.
Even now, undercutting the real thing damages legitimate businesses, wherever they are. Of course, the customer suffers. Made of cheap materials and shoddily put together, counterfeit goods perform badly and often break down, leaving the customer dissatisfied and out of pocket. More importantly, however—certainly to the debate today—such goods are not only substandard, but often dangerous to use. There is a real risk that they will increase the number of domestic fires. My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) knows well the associated risks and the cost of domestic fires, whether human or economic.
As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East, over Christmas there was a spate of stories about counterfeit electrical goods—NutriBullets, hoverboards, dangerous hair straighteners, Apple accessories and so on. According to Electrical Safety First, more than 17,000 domestic fires a year in this country are caused by faulty appliances, with 40 to 45 deaths. Surely they should be more preventable.
Of course, it is easy to say that customers should be a bit more careful and check what they are buying, but often it does not occur to them that what they are buying could kill them. People tend to trust implicitly goods bought on trusted internet sites, assuming that they must be legitimate to be accepted on to sites such as eBay. We need more legislation to make websites responsible for the products that they sell.
People assume, like when they buy a fake leather bag when on holiday in Turkey, that they are simply getting a good deal, because the real thing seems overpriced. As we heard from the hon. Members for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) and for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes), people on a low income always want to save money on goods, and the real thing is often overpriced. Many people—a quarter of people—buy fake goods knowingly.
We need more public education. I admit that I spent the weekend checking my iPhone chargers to see whether they are genuine, and it is really difficult to tell. What are the Government doing to increase consumer knowledge of the dangers of counterfeit goods and, equally importantly, of how to identify them? I had a magnifying glass out to look at some of the chargers to see whether the words were spelt correctly and whether they had a CEE notice. Surely, as the hon. Members for Strangford and for Rutherglen and Hamilton West mentioned, a charter mark would be an extremely sensible move so that such items are easily identifiable.
On consumer protection and the need to ensure that goods do not find their way into Britain, we have heard about the ports and border agents. Counterfeit goods should be quickly confiscated if found. However, we need to look again at product recall. Only last month the consumer campaigner Lynn Faulds Wood completed her independent review, in which she branded the product recall system as “out of date” and not working well enough.
Many people have mentioned the case of the Hotpoint tumble dryer that caught fire and destroyed a house. Two weeks on from news breaking of the Hotpoint, Indesit and Creda tumble dryer safety alert, the manufacturer had still not listed the affected products that potentially posed a fire risk. When a safety risk is discovered, the onus to initiate recall seems to be entirely on the manufacturer. That is not effective; the onus needs to be elsewhere. Certainly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse and the hon. Member for Strangford said, people do not always fill in the little cards to register their goods. Why not? Because they assume, like everything else, that they will get loads of manufacturer information landing on their doorstep daily.
What happens to those who move house? No one keeps manufacturers up to date—I cannot remember doing that—which is why I support Lynn Faulds Wood’s central recommendation for a national product safety agency, endorsed and backed by the Government. It would be good to know whether the Minister feels that would be effective. Surely it is no coincidence that recall works so much better for unfit food, for which we have the Food Standards Agency.
Underlying the central recommendation is a call for improved funding and resources for enforcement agencies. We have heard a lot about how legislation needs to be strengthened, but it is no use having legislation unless we enforce it. Trading standards in particular has had huge cuts under this Government and the coalition Government—it has suffered a 40% cut since 2010. Some offices report a halving of staff; in fact, I have heard of offices that have only one staff member to protect the public.
In a recent exchange with me, the Minister said:
“Trading standards services are merely one of the enforcement mechanisms for consumer rights. Consumers can enforce their own rights, as established by the Consumer Rights Act, and trading standards services are working more efficiently across the country.”—[Official Report, 15 March 2016; Vol. 607, c. 781.]
I would be interested to know how he believes consumers can enforce their own rights when they are not aware of problems with faulty and unsafe electrical goods, or of the criminal rogue traders who deliberately flout the law. I would also like to hear what evidence he has for his statement that trading standards services are “working more efficiently”, given that the Government decided not to publish the trading standards review completed before Christmas, which undoubtedly found that trading standards are under-resourced.
Figures released by trading standards in March 2015 showed that more than 6,500 items a day were detained, and that nearly two in five interventions at ports and borders identified unsafe or non-compliant items— 64% of all LED lamps tested were unsafe. That is thought to represent a very small proportion of the volume of such products entering the country. Again, we need an assessment of that, and the enforcement agencies need resourcing. The £400,000 is welcome, but that is for National Trading Standards. It is often local trading standards offices that are the first port of call for worried consumers, and they are dropping in numbers.
This is not about cheap fake handbags that will not kill anyone; it is about counterfeit and dangerous electrical goods, and about the recall of goods that have been found to be dangerous. I finish with a quote from Lynn Faulds Wood’s review, which found
“the lack of adequate market surveillance to be a major problem in the UK, possibly the biggest problem.”
The Minister for Skills (Nick Boles)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, on this sad day. I associate myself with the comments about the victims in Brussels. I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing the debate and making such a comprehensive and thoughtful exposition of the issues that not just worry her but led directly to the death of one of her constituents. I also congratulate Electrical Safety First, which has clearly done a superlative job of engaging with Members from all parts of the House and providing them with compelling briefing.
In the debate, the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) got to the heart of the matter—the question of whether the arrangements we have to protect consumers are fit for purpose in the age of the internet, with globalised supply chains, where enforcement at a very localised level, as she called it, does not really address some of the bigger problems and sources of risk. It is for that reason that we did not feel that the previous review of trading standards had gone far enough: it did not really address her question. That is why a more fundamental review, not so much of trading standards as such, but of consumer protection in an internet age, has been launched by my hon. Friend the Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise. In the meantime, I will explain in the brief time available what the Government are doing with trading standards and other enforcement bodies. I hope thereby to answer most of the questions posed to me in the great range of excellent contributions from hon. Members.
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills provides £14.5 million a year to National Trading Standards and to Trading Standards Scotland, which use that money in large part to focus on the problems of faulty goods, counterfeit goods and the various different ways, whether through fulfilment houses or online trading sites, in which they find their way into the country. National Trading Standards has a safety at ports and borders team that focuses in particular on the physical import of those goods, but there is also close work between National Trading Standards and major sites such as Amazon, eBay and Facebook, which are clearly one of the main ways in which consumers are being sold either faulty or counterfeit or both faulty and counterfeit goods.
I will give one vivid and recent example of the enforcement action being undertaken. Operation Jasper involves 63 local authorities’ trading standards officers and has led to 4,300 Facebook listings being taken down, 12 premises raided and 200 warning letters sent to other traders. That is the kind of proactive enforcement that we want to see. I am sure that there is always more that can be done, but National Trading Standards and local trading standards are working closely with sites such as eBay, Facebook and Amazon on such measures. As another example, some brands of hoverboards and LED Christmas lights—items that were mentioned in the debate—were removed from eBay last October as a result of enforcement activity by trading standards.
The question of counterfeit goods is in a sense a subset of the issue we are debating, rather than a different matter. Some of the goods in question are not counterfeit; they are just faulty. Others are counterfeits but not faulty, and some are both. In September 2013 the coalition Government launched a dedicated intellectual property crime unit, run by the City of London police. That has been taking action against sellers who use Facebook, and those who use the more traditional route for counterfeit goods—the much-loved tradition of car boot sales. In legislation in 2014 we introduced a criminal sanction against the sale of counterfeit versions of goods that have registered trademarks or patents, to give legitimate producers a greater enforcement ability against those who persistently flout their intellectual property rights.
I want briefly to mention fulfilment houses, because they are one of the routes through which faulty and counterfeit goods can make their way to the consumer. As the hon. Member for Swansea East mentioned, there is one such fulfilment house in Swansea that has been the subject of enforcement action by trading standards and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. That action is continuing, but it has led to a large quantity of non-compliant goods being removed from sale, including unsafe electrical products and counterfeit goods. I hope that that goes some way to reassuring hon. Members that there is quite a range of enforcement activity—some that is more traditional, as well as other approaches that address the new globalised problem created by the internet. We should acknowledge, as I think we all do in our own lives, the massive opportunities that the internet has brought us.
Jim Fitzpatrick
I am not sure whether the Minister mentioned the timescale for the review of trading standards. Can he suggest how long it will last and what the outcome might be?
Nick Boles
I do not know off the top of my head, but I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman about that, and to copy in other hon. Members who have attended the debate. We have quite a range of expertise in the debate, and it would be useful to have contributions from hon. Members on both sides, including, perhaps, representatives of the Scottish Government, who I know also do a great deal of work on the question.
Martin Docherty-Hughes
The Minister mentioned the problem of the internet. Does he recognise that the internet is also a hope for the future, in relation to consumer rights and protection? People can put reviews on eBay and Facebook, and there are greater opportunities through technology than we have been giving credence to in the debate. I hope that the Government will take cognisance of the changes that are coming in technology, in the next 20 years, because what we have seen so far will pale into insignificance.
Nick Boles
I entirely agree. Before I took the intervention from the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) I was coming on to the fact that, for all that the internet has created opportunities for criminals and those who would abuse freedom, it has nevertheless also created even greater opportunities for legitimate traders and consumers. As the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) says, there are opportunities through the internet to share information about suppliers who have failed to live up to their obligations, and products that do not do what they are supposed to do, or are counterfeit or faulty.
In the debate, several hon. Members picked up on the idea of introducing a new charter mark, but I want to warn against viewing that as a panacea. As hon. Members will be aware, electrical goods are already required to carry the CE mark, and the problem is that lots of people fake that; so introducing a new charter mark would not itself necessarily deal with the problem. I presume that people would fake the new mark just as they did the previous one. It is more a question—and perhaps this is what was being suggested—of asking social media sites and trading platforms such as eBay, Facebook and Amazon to take responsibility themselves for having the kinds of review information that the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire mentioned, and to be proactive not just in taking products down but in kicking traders off their sites. Of course the traders would all go off and set up in a new guise two months later, and return to the sites, but consistent and persistent work to try to prevent consumers being ripped off or put at risk is needed. I assure the hon. Member for Swansea East that the Government will continue to work with her and other Members, and Electrical Safety First, to try to ensure that we have the problem under control.
Geraint Davies (in the Chair)
Because of excellent time keeping, I can call Carolyn Harris to wind up.
Carolyn Harris
Thank you, Mr Davies. As a fellow Swansea Jack it is with great pride that I have served under your excellent chairmanship today.
Today’s debate has demonstrated a depth of concern and strength of feeling about an important issue. I, like other MPs, pay tribute to Robert Jervis-Gibbons and Phil Buckle of Electrical Safety First for their excellent guidance, and their determination to bring the issue to the fore. I sincerely thank all hon. Members for their contributions. It has been an absolute delight to spend the morning with them all. I urge the Minister to work with Members and the all-party group to raise awareness, protect consumers and, potentially, save lives.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the importation of faulty electrical goods.
War in Yemen: First Anniversary
(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the first anniversary of war in Yemen.
I am grateful for the opportunity to hold a brief debate as one of the ways to mark one year of the dreadful human suffering that this poor country has witnessed. I am also grateful to all those who have taken time to attend the debate this morning.
Yemen is a country of just under 26 million people, with a land area comparable to that of the state of California. It occupies part of the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula, and its position means that it has always had immense strategic importance; it guards the narrow entrance between the gulf of Aden and the Red sea. Certainly since the building of the Suez canal, that route has been of immense importance to nations much further afield than the immediate middle eastern area.
There are records of civilisation in Yemen going back at least 5,000 years, and probably significantly longer. Yemen was almost certainly the location of the biblical kingdom of Sheba. It has been known for great wealth, great pomp and great power. Today, sadly, it is known for quite the opposite. Its nearest land neighbours are some of the wealthiest empires on the planet, and I ask Members to bear that in mind when I go on to talk about the desperate plight facing tens of millions of ordinary men, women and particularly children in Yemen.
For most of the country’s history, Yemen has been divided. In the 19th century, the British used military force to take over part of the southern area around Aden. Until then, most of Yemen had been under the Ottoman empire. The Ottomans remained in the north until their empire fell at the end of the first world war. British rule in the south continued until 1967. A few years later, the south came under Marxist rule, closely aligned to the Soviet bloc. When the Soviet bloc then collapsed in 1990, the two halves were united again, at least nominally.
However, the tension, suspicion and regular outbreaks of violence between north and south Yemen that marked the latter half of the 20th century have continued unabated since the country was notionally combined under a single ruler. The present war started after the Houthis, one of the main factions in the country, attempted to overthrow the rule of the President. The President is still recognised as such by influential neighbours such as Saudi Arabia, and also by the United Nations and most of the international community.
It is quite common for those looking for a simple answer to characterise the conflict as simply a dispute between Sunni and Shi’a Islamic forces. It is probably true that that element is part of the reason why Saudi Arabia has taken such a keen interest and has sought so hard to exert influence—sometimes by peaceful means and sometimes not. Saudi Arabia has made it clear that it is not comfortable with the idea of a Shi’a Government being present on its southern border with Yemen.
Yemen is a country that is still deeply divided. There is no right or wrong answer as to who should be regarded as the legitimate ruler just now. Democracy has never really flourished in either part of the country, certainly since it was unified. There were elections of sorts, but there has never been a time when the rule of the ballot box has prevailed for any length of time over the rule of the bomb and the bullet. If we were to ask the ordinary citizens of Yemen now who they want their Government to be, those who were not too scared to speak out would, in all probability, say, “Just give us peace. Give us stability, and we’ll worry about who our Government is later.”
It is important to recognise that the fact that the deposed President is still regarded by the UK and others as the legitimate President has been used by some powers to justify taking a one-sided stance in the dispute and conflict. For me, there are serious questions as to whether either faction can be regarded as fit to govern. Claims of appalling abuses of human rights and crimes against humanity—the use of deliberate starvation of children as a weapon of war, for example—have been laid with significant credibility at the feet of both factions, and we need to ask the question: would it be acceptable for either of those sets of war criminals to take charge of the country when there is an end to the present conflict?
There is a lot of uncertainty and no definite right and wrong answers as to who the Government should be. One problem is that going back to the days of empires, colonial powers and so on, it is hard to find a single period when anyone who governed Yemen cared very much about the 25 million to 26 million people who live there. I do not think that either of the factions now fighting for control of the country are really that interested in the welfare of civilians.
In the background, and moving very much into the foreground, is al-Qaeda, which has had a presence in Yemen for a number of years. It has taken advantage of the instability and the conflict to seize more and more territory. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as it now styles itself, is probably the most powerful, influential and dangerous element of al-Qaeda anywhere in the world. We should be concerned about that, and we should be looking for a peaceful and just resolution to the conflict so that different sides in the dispute can start to concentrate on removing al-Qaeda and the threat it carries.
An indication, perhaps, of just how complex and often incomprehensible the whole situation is are the credible—and I believe thoroughly accurate—accounts that Saudi-led coalition forces have fought alongside al-Qaeda forces at times during the conflict. If a war leads to Saudi forces and al-Qaeda fighting on the same side, it should tell all of us that we have to think very carefully about how we get involved.
What there can be no room for any doubt about whatsoever is the desperate plight of tens of millions of ordinary men, women and children just like us in Yemen. Save the Children provided a helpful briefing for us a few weeks ago, and I will quote some of its figures. It is producing a much more detailed and up-to-date report tomorrow; I do not want to pre-empt that launch, other than to say that the report does not change very much Save the Children’s description a few weeks ago of the severity of the situation. It has reported, as have others, that more than 2,000 children have been killed or seriously injured in the past 12 months. The initial report states that
“1.3 million children under the age of five are suffering from acute, life-threatening malnutrition.”
It continues:
“In 2015, more civilian deaths and injuries from explosive weapons were recorded in Yemen than in any other country around the world.”
Yemen is the most dangerous place in the world in terms of civilians being killed by bombs and missiles. It is also regarded by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and, I believe, by Save the Children as the country with the most people in desperate need of humanitarian aid. Estimates of the number of people who are in a life-threatening situation through a lack of humanitarian aid start at around the 10 million mark. As I said, 1.3 million children under five are suffering from life-threatening malnutrition. For a four or five-year-old, the time it takes to go from life-threatening to too late is not very long at all. We have to act, and we have to act now, to establish safe and secure routes for food and other essential supplies to get to those children, their families and their parents.
There have been reports—again, reliable ones—that when explosive weapons have been used in built-up areas, 93% of the casualties have been civilians. If that is the case and attacks keep happening, we have to ask ourselves: is that really accidental? Is it really unintentional? It cannot be claimed to be unforeseen, and my view is that anyone who undertakes any act of violence when civilian casualties are foreseen or foreseeable must be held fully responsible for wilfully and recklessly causing deaths.
Jo Cox (Batley and Spen) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this timely discussion. As he will be aware, the UK is Europe’s largest donor of humanitarian aid to Yemen, but at the same time the UK is also the largest arms supplier to Saudi Arabia. Does he agree that it would be great to have an answer from the Minister today about how the Government can reconcile that stark contradiction?
Peter Grant
I am grateful for that intervention, and I agree entirely. I do not remember the exact figures— I have them somewhere—but I can say that UK emergency aid to Yemen is measured in the tens of millions, whereas UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia are measured in thousands of millions. The disparity is stark.
I come to the question of arms sales. The Government have previously defended them, essentially by saying, “We can’t find any evidence that weapons from British sources have been used actively in this oppression and in killing civilians,” but that is not good enough. The United Nations panel of experts has identified 119 cases in which Saudi-led coalition forces have undertaken military action in breach of international humanitarian law, either because they have deliberately targeted civilian targets or because they knew that by attacking military targets, there was a significant risk that civilian targets would be affected. That is why we are seeing schools, hospitals, roads, railways and mosques—the very fabric of society in Yemen—being destroyed.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
My good friend mentions hospitals in Yemen. Does he share my horror that Médecins sans Frontières hospitals in Yemen have been hit by projectiles and missiles, and that even ambulances have been hit as part of the conflict, putting at risk medical staff and the people they are desperately trying to help?
Peter Grant
Again, that is a very valid point. It seems to me that whereas Governments the world over—if they are doing anything—are siding with the Saudi-led coalition, the only people who are really putting themselves out to help those in the most need of it are organisations such as Médecins sans Frontières, Save the Children and other non-governmental organisations. Many of them put their staff and volunteers at enormous risk and many of them, including Médecins sans Frontières, have seen colleagues lose their lives in air strikes, which I do not think can credibly be laid at the door of anyone other than the Saudi-led coalition.
I draw Members’ attention to an answer given on 10 March to a written question from the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), who is one of a number of Members who have pressed the Government on aspects of the conflict. He asked specifically what the response of the Government of Saudi Arabia was to the representations that had been made about the attack on the hospital and about a number of other reports of attacks on civilians and breaches of human rights. As is so often the case, the Government provided a reply but not an answer; they gave no indication that they had had any response at all. I ask the Minister today: in response to United Kingdom representations, have we yet had a substantive answer from the Saudis explaining specifically the destruction of the Médecins sans Frontières hospital?
My view is that it is not enough to say that we cannot find proof that the Saudis have done this deliberately, or even that the Saudis have done this at all. It is not enough to say that we cannot find substantive proof that weapons or weapons components—some of which are manufactured by Raytheon in my constituency, incidentally—have been used. By this time, there should be conclusive evidence that they have not been used. The UK Government’s position appears to be, “We are not going to investigate it particularly carefully; it is up to the Saudis to investigate what their military forces are doing.” What kind of system of international justice would we have if an accusation of mass murder was investigated only by the accused person?
Jo Cox
The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. As he will be aware, a recent UN panel of experts found that all sides in the Yemen conflict have committed serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, yet at the UN Human Rights Council, the UK Government and Saudi Arabia blocked the establishment of an independent international commission inquiry into the allegations. Does he agree that it is now time for our Government to push for that independent international UN commission of inquiry so that we get to the bottom of these crimes against humanity?
Peter Grant
Absolutely—and I should say that questions have been asked about how exactly the Saudis got that position on the Human Rights Council and who wielded influence. That is possibly a debate for another day, but Her Majesty’s Government still have questions to answer in that area.
I want to give the Minister as much time as possible, because I am aware that responses to Westminster Hall debates fall into two camps. One is when a Minister gives a reasoned, thoughtful and helpful response, and although they are perhaps not able to give commitments, they certainly recognise that concerns have been raised and give an undertaking that the Government will seriously consider the representations that have been made, which the House no doubt accepts in good faith. The other kind is when a Minister reads a brief that could have been prepared and read by anybody, and really takes us no further forward. I hope that the Minister’s response today is of the former kind, because we need answers, including the answer that has not come yet to the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington. What responses have the Saudis given, as of today, to the serious and urgent questions that the Government asked them several weeks ago about reports indicating that the Saudi-led coalition is in breach of international law? What responses have they given on the bombing of the Médecins sans Frontières hospital, for example?
Of the 119 documented cases where it appears that Saudi-led coalition forces have committed war crimes and acted in breach of international law, can the Minister point to any one that he is satisfied has been properly investigated? The Saudis are investigating in general terms, and it is quite clear that they will not take it on themselves to investigate individual incidents. If nobody investigates individual incidents when there are accusations of war crimes, the war criminals will get off scot-free.
Most importantly, I want a commitment from the Government that they will use their full influence to call for an immediate and lasting ceasefire across the whole territory of Yemen, because until that happens, we cannot start to get essential food, medical and other supplies brought into the country. Yemen relies heavily on imports for its food, fuel and other life essentials. I commend the Government for the action they were able to take to ease the blockade that was imposed on the main port of Yemen, but we still have to ask how anybody could blockade the major port in a country that relies on imports to feed its children and not stand accused of deliberately using the starvation of children as a weapon of war. Whatever else may come out of the investigations into individual military airstrikes, I believe that those who sanctioned the blockade and those who helped to enforce it have a case to answer. I want to hear a commitment from the Government that they will press for those responsible to be brought before an international court if evidence can be found against them.
We have to turn off the tap to stop the bath from overflowing. If we operated a country sports shop and heard claims that one of our customers was shooting children as well as deer in the forests, would we wait for them to be convicted, or would we say to them next time they came in, “We are not selling you any more bullets”? There are surely enough credible, documented cases for the United Kingdom Government to say immediately, “We will no longer provide weapons of war, or the components of weapons of war, until we have cast-iron evidence that none of them have been used for the killing of children in Yemen.” Otherwise, all those who have condoned the military action in any way, whether they are brought to account soon or much later on, will be faced with the accusation, “I was hungry and you cut off my food supply. I was sick and you bombed my hospital. I was a child and you denied me the right to grow to adulthood.” If we have done this to the least of these children, we have done it to the creator of these children. There is no more time for prevarication. There can be no more justification for complicity, direct or indirect, in the killing of Yemen’s children. There should be an immediate ban on the sale of military equipment of any kind to anyone involved in this carnage.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Tobias Ellwood)
It is a pleasure to work under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I very much welcome this debate, which is one of a series we have had—and, I hope, will continue to have—that scrutinises what the Government are doing with the international community to assist people to see the atrocities and tragedy taking place in Yemen, and not least to raise the profile of what is happening there, bearing in the mind the other challenges that we face in the middle east. I very much congratulate the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) on securing this debate.
The UK counts itself among Yemen’s strongest friends, with a relationship, as the hon. Gentleman outlined, that dates back centuries. Aden was the main refuelling stop for ships between Britain and the far east and many Yemeni immigrants form some of the oldest Muslim communities in the UK, particularly in the port areas of Liverpool, South Shields and Cardiff.
Yemen is the poorest country in the middle east. For some years now, the UK has taken the lead in trying to tackle poverty, support state institutions and address the dire humanitarian situation. Furthermore, peace and stability in Yemen matter to the UK because that is the best way to mitigate the terrorist threat emanating from the Arab peninsula. Well-established groups in Yemen, such as AQAP—al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula—and now Daesh, are a threat to our national security and we remain resolved to tackle this.
Regarding the conflict, the House is aware that Yemen had been making steady progress towards improved stability. A Gulf Cooperation Council-brokered initiative back in 2011 committed all parties to talks, to a new constitution and to national elections, but regretfully the Houthis stepped away from the talks. They chose conflict instead of consensus and in September 2014, with support from forces loyal to former President Saleh, they staged a takeover of the legitimate Government of President Hadi and took control of key state institutions. That was clearly unacceptable, but also a clear violation of the 1994 Yemeni constitution and the principles of the 2011 Gulf Cooperation Council initiative.
The legitimate President of Yemen, President Hadi, called for help to deter Houthi aggression. A Saudi Arabian-led regional coalition responded to enable the return of the legitimate Yemeni Government. The UN then passed Security Council resolution 2216—the House has become very familiar with it—condemning the unilateral actions of the Houthis and the destabilising actions of both the Houthis and former President Saleh.
The Houthis consistently failed to implement commitments made in the so-called peace and national partnership agreement of September 2014. Houthis and pro-Saleh forces seized territory and heavy weapons across the country. They are holding the Minister of Defence and other senior members of the Yemeni Government under house arrest and have shown total disregard for the welfare of civilians. They have also failed to adhere to UN Security Council resolutions.
It is important to remember that this is the context of the Saudi Arabian-led coalition’s military intervention. Saudi Arabia and the coalition have played a crucial role in reversing the military advance of the Houthis and forces loyal to former President Saleh. I want to make it clear that the UK is not part of the Saudi-led coalition. We are encouraging the coalition and the Yemeni Government to use their military gains to drive forward the political process.
I can share with the House the fact that in recent days there has been some encouraging progress. We have seen de-escalation along the Saudi border in the north and prisoner exchanges. We welcome the announcement on 17 March by the Saudi Arabian-led coalition that it intends to scale back its military operations in Yemen. A political solution is the best way to end the conflict and to bring long-term stability to Yemen.
The hon. Gentleman raised human rights violations. Hon. Members have mentioned several alleged violations of international humanitarian law by actors in the conflict. We are aware of the allegations that have been made by a variety of sources, including the UN panel of experts in its recent report. We looked at that very closely and take the allegations seriously. However, as I shared with the House, the report was conducted by people who did not enter the country, but used satellite technology to make their assessments, so we must place that in context with our ability to do our own assessments. The Ministry of Defence monitors incidents of alleged IHL violations using available information, which in turn informs our overall assessment of IHL compliance in Yemen.
I have previously committed to raising the allegations with the Saudi Government and did so most recently on my visit to Saudi Arabia and with the Saudi ambassador last month. I will continue to raise any such concerns. It is of course important to determine the facts of any incident and the Saudis set out their own internal investigation procedures, which are very welcome, at a press conference on 31 January.
Hon. Members also raised the issue of arms sales, but I ask whether the humanitarian situation would be any better if the UK were not selling arms to Saudi Arabia and that country was not engaged in supporting President Hadi. The hon. Member for Glenrothes questioned that. Without the coalition, the Houthis would have pressed down to the port of Aden and the scale of the humanitarian disaster in that country would be a lot worse than the one we are facing now. The fact is that the Houthis have been forced to the political table, and we now see the potential for a ceasefire because of the stalemate.
Peter Grant
Just for clarity, will the Minister say whether the UK Government’s view is that there is no credible evidence that the Saudi coalition forces have been involved in actions against international humanitarian law?
Mr Ellwood
No, I did not say that. The hon. Gentleman is leaping and almost putting words in my mouth. I want to make it clear that we have discussions with the Saudi Arabian regime and say that if there are alleged violations, they must be looked into. The Médecins sans Frontières hospital is an example of that and of when the regime should put its hand up. We have experienced this in the past in operations in Afghanistan and Iraq when collateral damage took place. It is important that procedures are in place to make sure the hand goes up, investigations take place and the necessary reparations are made. We do not want violations glossed over, which is why we are firm with every partner in the coalition to make sure they are clear about their targeting processes.
Mr Ellwood
What would make me sleep at night is making sure people come to the table. We are now embarking on that, thanks to the work of the UN envoy and those involved in the discussions. That is the direction we are heading in. Yes, there are allegations and we make it clear that we are doing our own assessments to understand whether the equipment we sell has any participation in that and indeed whether the violations are by the Houthis or the Saudi Arabians.
I was pleased the hon. Lady recognised—the hon. Gentleman did not mention this—that another adversary is in breach of many humanitarian laws, not least the use of child soldiers and so on. This is not to exonerate any alleged breach or violation or the fact that they must be looked into. In its resolution in October 2014, the UN Human Rights Council made it clear what the process would be. It offered UN assistance to make sure violations are looked into and a report will come back to the council in the next month.
Mr Ellwood
There are two and a half minutes left. This is the hon. Gentleman’s debate and I will give way if he wants me to, or I can conclude.
Peter Grant
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I think he misunderstood or missed part of what I said. Let me be clear: I believe that both sides in this conflict are guilty of appalling crimes and that neither is fit to take over the Government of Yemen. I do not make a distinction between good war criminals and bad war criminals. There is only one sort of war criminal in my book.
Mr Ellwood
I am glad I gave way and that the hon. Gentleman was able to place that on the record. It is very much appreciated.
In the limited time left, I want to say that the British military have some of the highest standards in the world governing our conduct in armed conflicts, including with regard to civilians. We have drawn on our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and we certainly want to share that with other nations, but we are not part of the targeting process in Saudi Arabia or the coalition.
The humanitarian response is important, but also complex. As the hon. Gentleman said, 82% of the population is in need of assistance. That is why the Government have pledged more than £85 million to date, making it the fourth largest humanitarian donor.
The Government are doing all we can to support a meaningful peace process and to seek an early political resolution to the conflict. At UN-facilitated talks in December 2015, the parties committed to further dialogue and that offers some hope for the future. We continue to support the UN special envoy in his efforts to convene those talks over the coming weeks and to review the ceasefire.
The Government’s position is clear: the conflict in Yemen must end and the humanitarian situation must be addressed. The legitimate Yemeni Government must be allowed to return to the capital. A political solution remains the best way to end the conflict, to bring long-term stability to Yemen and to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe. All parties must engage constructively, without preconditions and in good faith. We are working closely with diplomatic channels to make this political solution a reality and to bring this devastating conflict to an end.
Question put and agreed to.
GPS and Heavy Goods Vehicles
(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered GPS satellite navigation and heavy goods vehicles.
This is an increasingly complex issue because of the proliferation in recent years of devices and, more importantly, software available across Android, Apple and Microsoft-driven smartphones. The issue is not new but has been bubbling in the background for well over a decade. In-vehicle information systems, or IVISs, have received Government attention over the years, including in the Road Traffic (Driver Licensing and Information Systems) Act 1989 and the Driver Information Systems (Exemption) Order 1990, which concentrated on a licensing scheme for providers of real-time on-the-move information, such as Trafficmaster.
There was also a Government consultation in 2006, which sadly received just 111 replies. The results of that consultation were published in May 2008, but there were no firm recommendations for action. However, the sat-nav problem was highlighted in the consultation. In those days, very few heavy goods vehicle-only systems were available, which shows how technology has moved on at an exponential rate. The report concentrated heavily on the safety issues of—this is quite bizarre nomenclature—the human-machine interface, or HMI. There was subsequently one welcome legislative amendment, in 2011, giving local highways authorities the ability to implement advisory signs without formal traffic orders needing to be made.
On 6 March 2012, the Department for Transport hosted a “Delivering the best information to all in-vehicle satellite navigation users” afternoon. It was intended to encourage appropriate sat-nav use, local authority involvement with the mapping companies, and consideration of using the insurance market to force HGVs to require appropriate HGV-robust sat-navs. That is especially important when hugely expensive bridge collisions occur, as happens in many constituencies. Those collisions can stop train services while the damage is assessed. That has not been an uncommon occurrence on the north Kent line running through Strood.
Kent County Council, as the highways authority for Kent, issued a freight action plan in October 2012 to cover the four-year period from 2012 to 2016. It highlighted the problem, unique to Kent, of having the active cross-channel ports of Dover and Sheerness, the port of London, the then fully operational Ramsgate port, and the channel tunnel. Kent has a uniquely high level and density of foreign trucks on its roads because of the port activities, and that presents unique problems. The KCC action plan highlighted inappropriate sat-nav use and particularly the necessity of appropriate advertising of strategic road use across the county.
The Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), told the House on 20 July 2015 that legislation might be an inappropriate and bureaucratic means of addressing these issues. Despite a number of years considering the problem and despite the numerous initiatives, the problem persists, and it is my contention that it is getting worse and more widespread than ever. The A257 Sandwich to Canterbury road suffers from inappropriate HGV use, and, importantly for the historic fabric of our nation, there are far too regular occurrences of economic standstill in the historic town of Sandwich as inappropriate vehicles that have absolutely no cause to be there become literally stuck, sometimes for hours.
I apologise in advance for the technical nature of my next comments, but I think it is worth while to lay out the framework of the advanced wizardry behind this now routinely used technology. The global positioning system comprises 31 US satellites orbiting 12,500 miles above the Earth. The system became fully live in 1995, but was available before then at lower levels of accuracy.
James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend, who is making an excellent speech on a subject that is important to my constituency. He mentions the wizardry involved. He may be interested to learn—I will talk about this later—that one of the houses in my constituency that is most frequently damaged by HGVs was used for the set of the Harry Potter film. Unfortunately, that wizardry is not available to us.
Craig Mackinlay
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am sure that if we asked just about every Member of the House, they would be able to cite similar problems of historic buildings being hit.
I will develop a little further my point about the technical wizardry. The GPS concept is based on time and the known position of specialised satellites, which carry stable atomic clocks that are synchronised to one another and to ground clocks. The satellites’ locations are known with great precision. The GPS receivers that we all have on our phones and cars and wherever else also have very accurate clocks. GPS satellites transmit their current time and position, and a GPS receiver, looking at multiple satellites, solves a complex equation and determines its exact position.
As can be imagined, given the usefulness of such technology, it was designed in the US primarily for military use, but its use rapidly spread to marine navigation and has now spread to road navigation, as accuracy levels are now down to 5 metres or less. The system is free to any user on the planet who has a GPS device and it must be considered a true gift from the United States taxpayer to the world. Other countries have replicated the system, or tried to replicate it. There is the Russian GLONASS system, and the European Galileo system and Indian, Chinese and Japanese equivalents are in progress. However, I doubt that any of those new variants will ever overcome the dominance of the US GPS system, obtained through reliability and dependability. There is of course the downside that the US Government could at their discretion turn off the system for civil use at any time. One can imagine that at times of global instability that might be done, but it has never happened thus far.
It was not too many years ago—perhaps 15 years ago—that I was looking with some wonderment at the new gadgets that were appearing on friends’ car dashboards. TomTom was an early market entrant, and for many it became a status gadget, along with early in-built dashboard models in premium cars. However, it became clear within a year or two that they rapidly became out of date as new road schemes came into being. Updates for such machines were cumbersome, were often subject to expensive upgrade charges and, in the case of in-built systems, were sometimes available only at main dealers.
Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for initiating this debate on a pertinent issue. He makes the point about devices losing their accuracy as new roads are built. It is also still a problem that they cannot tell how big or small a road is. In my constituency there is a place called New Smithy, near Chinley. Wagons continually get sent down the road there. The county council, which I rarely have a good word for, has done what it can with signage, but devices lead drivers down to a low bridge that they cannot get under. They have to turn round and they knock the bridge, and the costs of having to keep repairing the bridge are ridiculous. That is all because of sat-navs not being able to tell that there is a low bridge under which drivers cannot get their wagons.
Craig Mackinlay
My hon. Friend highlights exactly what the debate is all about. I will be coming to exactly that issue in a moment.
There are now a host of portable devices—they are actually called nomadic dedicated devices—that people can put in their pocket and in different vehicles that they own. They are available at varying costs, with new brand names now commonplace in the market. TomTom was a market leader in the early days. Now there is Garmin, which was traditionally a big player in the marine navigation market, and there are names such as Mio, Navman, Magellan and many others. The price of those machines for car use is now as little as £50. For larger screen sizes, the prices can be up to £250.
The market has changed, because we now have the ability to download smartphone software, often for free, across the major phone operating systems. A search of Google Play or Apple’s App Store would reveal a huge choice of available software. Some is free if one is prepared to accept adverts, and some is free for a limited trial period. There are also fully paid systems, but even those are at a remarkably low cost, sometimes of less than £20. Practically every personal digital assistant device that we own—smartphones, iPads, other tablets—now has GPS functionality, and they can all support such software. Many operate on the widespread Google Maps application, which, as with everything Google, is becoming dominant.
James Cartlidge
I want to go back to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) made. My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) is talking a lot about technology, and I must admit that I do not have the same level of expertise that he does. Is there any sign in the industry that the technology is reaching a point at which, without us having to legislate or regulate, it could tell a driver, “This road is inappropriate relative to the size of your vehicle”?
Craig Mackinlay
If my hon. Friend will let me continue just a little bit further, I will address the potential solutions.
We all realise the dominance of Google in our lives and on every machine that we own. Google Maps is a widely used application, but the downside for many of us is that it needs data transfer and use while on the move. That is not particularly helpful for people who are travelling abroad, given the data charges for foreign use. Software-based systems—the dedicated TomTom-style devices—have underlying, in-built maps called geographic information system data. They are installed so that there is no mobile data use. That is often the underlying framework used by nomadic and smartphone devices.
I think the solution lies with the base maps that the systems use. Only a few are actually used. A market leader is Navteq’s SDAL map, which is now called HERE. The Tele Atlas system drives TomTom and provides Apple Maps with its data. Of course, Google Maps has its own system. There is also an open source system called OpenStreetMap. There are 100 or more software variants that can run across different types of map data, and there is interchangeability in some software and devices so that they can accept and read any maps, from wherever they are sourced.
Royston Smith (Southampton, Itchen) (Con)
I appreciate my hon. Friend giving way and congratulate him on securing the debate.
The emergency services sometimes have a problem if, for example, a road has been cut in half because something has changed, with a housing estate being built or something of that nature. However, they tend to make that mistake only once. Can something be done along the lines of what the emergency services do, so that updates to roads can be fed in to the companies that supply us with devices?
Craig Mackinlay
On the Navteq website, the public have the ability to put in new data as they arise. The company will then check those data and, if it is satisfied with their quality, they will become a new variant of future maps that it produces. Everybody is able to update those maps on a regular basis. It comes down to the fact that the data are out there if one could only find them.
For anybody who uses such systems, other data sources can be laid over the map data—often speed camera information or locations of points of interest such as museums, restaurants or even petrol stations—but, again, another problem creeps in. There is a huge black market out there of free downloads across so-called torrent sites, and that is becoming a huge industry. Therein lie the problems of accuracy and reliability, and questions about whether the data driving the devices are actually up to date at all.
Within a huge majority of the systems with which we are now becoming familiar, choices are available, including voice type and whether the data are required in metric or imperial. One can set up advanced warning alerts, choose whether travel is on foot or by car and decide whether one wants to take the shortest route, the fastest route, or a route with or without tolls. Wrong data or out-of-date devices are issues. If that is applied just to driving in a car, the worst that could possibly happen is that it could lead to a fine if entering a changed road layout, for example. In HGVs, the problem—and this is at the heart of the debate—can be infinitely more serious.
On that point, I come to the key issue. The use by HGV drivers of those cheaper car devices—available for £50, as I mentioned earlier—is all too common. That is compounded by smartphone software that is designed for car use only and, overlaid on that, the use of out-of-date map data that are perhaps downloaded illegally or from dubious sources. I am pleased to say that the problem is not largely seen across the UK lorry fleet. I pay tribute to the Freight Transport Association for its attempts to encourage its 15,000 members to buy HGV-compliant devices. It even has its own industry specialist shop, and provides a high level of advice to its members. I am pleased to say that common sense prevails across its wide membership and influence.
I do not particularly want to single out foreign drivers as the main culprits, but the example I want to present is from Sandwich in my constituency. I am sure that in almost every constituency in the country there are instances—such as those that have been raised by hon. Members today—of HGVs too often using inappropriate roads. A common excuse is usually advanced, and it always runs something like, “Oh, my sat-nav told me to.” After that, there is often a mad struggle for Google Translate to solve the communication problem.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. These issues might sound trivial to some people who do not have constituencies that are constantly affected by them. In my constituency, the A170 runs up Sutton Bank and there are two one-in-fours divided by a hairpin bend. There are two incidents there a week with lorries having to back up all the way into the village, often causing damage to property and huge tailbacks for several hours. Does my hon. Friend know the combined economic costs of all these issues nationally?
Craig Mackinlay
My hon. Friend makes a very good point about not just the physical damage that occurs to road structures and historical buildings, but the economic cost of hours of tailbacks. One could probably make a reasonable guesstimate of what that cost would be in an individual place but, as my hon. Friend points out, this is happening in virtually every town in every constituency on a weekly basis.
Andrew Bingham
My seat is very rural so we have all the economic difficulties but there are also safety issues. Wagons are being shoehorned down lanes such as Mainstone Road, which is related to the problem in my constituency that I have already mentioned. Large wagons go down little lanes and roads, often at times when schools are turning out and so on. There is a safety issue as well as all the inconvenience, and the problem is particularly acute in rural areas.
Craig Mackinlay
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point. Not only do we have physical damage but we have the economic costs and the serious issue of road safety in areas that should not be affected by having such huge lorries in the wrong places.
Sandwich in South Thanet is the best preserved medieval town in the country—I am sure other Members will be on their feet claiming the same of towns in their constituency—and HGVs have caused damage to its roads, kerbs, signs and, perhaps more importantly, its historical buildings. There is a particular junction—Members will realise the historical nature of Sandwich—called Breezy Corner, and just a little way away is a barbican dating back to 1539 and an ancient toll bridge. Those structures are damaged on an almost weekly basis. In addition—and this addresses the economic points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake)—40-foot HGVs are completely unable to negotiate the tight corners in such an historical town, which often leads to the complete blockage of the town for many hours while emergency services attempt to sort out the mess. That is time that the emergency services, particularly the police, could and should use to deal with other issues.
The A257, the Sandwich to Canterbury road, is served by lots of little feeder roads, some barely wide enough for a car. That is just within 10 miles of Dover so, again, it is commonplace to find foreign HGV drivers slavishly following their sat-nav’s guidance after selecting the shortest route option.
Royston Smith
My hon. Friend rightly mentions the physical damage to buildings and the economic damage, but there is also the emotional damage and the frustration caused to residents when lorries constantly drive into residential areas.
Craig Mackinlay
My hon. Friend makes the perfect point. I have many residents in Sandwich who are fearful for their property and for their very life, and he raises that problem well.
I would never call myself a luddite, but consulting a good old-fashioned road map always seems to result in greater awareness of my location and how to get to my destination. When using a sat-nav, I am reduced to the state of a compliant zombie, like an automaton at the wheel doing exactly what I am told by the artificial voice from the machine. “Turn left in 300 yards,” and so on. I am sure hon. Members have all felt the same.
I have consulted various retail websites and—this is the important point—HGV-compliant sat-navs are available. For instance, the TomTom Trucker is available at £290, with little obvious difference in screen size or functionality from the car model available for a third of the price. As part of my research before the debate, I consulted a nationwide haulage company, R Swain & Sons. The company’s head office is in north Kent and I know the owner, Mr Bob Swain. He explained the approach taken by his business. He uses no sat-navs at all in his fleet—not one—but he ensures that his drivers are provided with maps and given time to plan their routes before setting out. I know of no instance where one of his lorries has caused such problems.
Of course, it is easy to highlight in Parliament the problems that we face, but I like to come at such problems with potential solutions. In this case, there are six potential solutions. We could implement legislative change to force the use of the right HGV-compliant sat-navs. If we go over and drive in the continent, we face the requirements under French law to carry high-vis jackets, reflective triangles and alcohol breath testers, and we accept those requirements as the rules of that place. I do not propose the mandatory use of sat-navs so that they have to be carried by HGVs, but I suggest that, if they are used at all, they should be compliant and suitable for the vehicle or else face potential forfeiture once found not to be appropriate.
I have encouraged Kent County Council’s highways authority, and I would do the same for all highways authorities, to ensure that maps of Kent that clearly highlight strategic road routes that should be used, and clearly mark the towns and villages that should be avoided, are provided free at ports of entry. With the implementation of an Operation Stack truck-stop solution coming to Kent in due course, providing such maps could serve a useful double purpose. I imagine that advertising sponsorship could be found to defray or cover the costs of such maps.
I would like to see greater use made of the freedoms of the December 2011 road signs measures so that local areas can clearly advise of dangers ahead. As a Government we could encourage data standards for the submission of data by the highways authorities to the mapping companies, because those companies are key. It is frustrating that all the data are known for every road in the country—be it heights, widths or road changes—but they are not being appropriately consolidated and provided to the mapping companies.
I recommend a benchmark standard for the sat-nav manufacturers and software providers to which they should be encouraged to adhere. The benchmark would include—this is the key—a mandatory lorry option across every single device. There is already an option to choose whether one is on foot or in a car, so let us add a mandatory lorry option. That would require manufacturer and software producer buy-in to a voluntary industry code of practice.
I would also like to see a widening of local authorities’ civil powers to levy fines outside of the police’s powers. We have seen a general reluctance among authorities to enforce fines across borders on foreign lorries, as we have seen with Transport for London, the congestion charge, the Dartford crossing and general parking enforcement. It sounds good, but it might not prove as effective as imagined.
I close by highlighting that we face an unprecedented free-for-all in current sat-nav use, with inappropriate devices and software in play across many HGVs—mainly, I am sorry to say, foreign ones. I am not one for draconian legislation, but our towns, villages and historical locations need protection. I would be happy to work with the Department for Transport to find a workable and practical solution and I look forward to the Minister’s comments.
James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. Again, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) on securing this timely debate. I am here because I receive constant email correspondence on the subject, which I regard as one of the biggest issues in my constituency.
In the past couple of weeks, we have had a major incident in Sudbury, a big market town in my constituency, which I will address in a moment. The purpose of my speech is simply to emphasise that there is a problem that we need to address. My hon. Friend has come up with many interesting solutions, and I will not pretend to share his technical expertise, but I will emphasise what is happening in my constituency.
Lavenham is a fine medieval village. I will not be undiplomatic and get into a competition about how it compares with Sandwich, but suffice it to say that they clearly share a great and ancient heritage that is threatened by HGVs. I recently received an email about Lavenham from a chap called Tony Ranzetta, who lives in Water Street—his house dates back to the 15th century and was used in the “Harry Potter” films. He says:
“Along the A1141 as it enters the village of Lavenham, is a unique set of houses, the longest uninterrupted terrace of medieval hall houses in England, followed by one of the hall houses owned by the Earl of Oxford and recently forming much of Godric’s Hollow in the Harry Potter films.”
I do not know the significance of Godric’s Hollow. My wife and daughter are very keen on “Harry Potter.” The email continues:
“The wider issue of the risk to our heritage across the county and the opportunity to use this current issue and the incident in Sudbury as the spur should only be grasped if it leads to the establishment of a county wide approach to diverting heavy goods traffic from ‘heritage’ villages and towns. We need to show a united and strategic front in the face of a problem shared across the county.”
Another resident of Lavenham, Mrs Simonetta Stonehouse, lives in one of the most beautiful houses on the High Street there. She recently wrote to me, saying:
“HGVs travelling through Lavenham High Street mount the pavement outside our house then negotiate the left turning into Water Street. I’m sure you are aware that the Swan Hotel”—
a famous and ancient hotel—
“has been damaged on numerous occasions, our property has also been hit. Houses on Water Street are regularly damaged and not so long ago a car was written off by a six-axle 44-tonne vehicle. It is not only the damage that these vehicles are doing to our medieval village but also the issue of safety to the residents and tourists.”
I was recently in Lavenham and witnessed an HGV of extraordinary proportions—I have never seen a lorry that big—attempting to go down Water Street, which is very narrow, although unfortunately technically an A road, which is part of the problem. The houses on it, including the house to which I referred, are beautiful and ancient. Lorries are scraping past them and tearing them to pieces, and it is incredibly sad to see. That is the heritage of the constituency that I represent, and I have come here to stand up for it and to find a way to protect it. Lavenham is also one of our biggest tourism draws, and I worry about the damage that could be done. Tourists do not come to villages to see massive HGVs go through them. The lorry on that occasion was an articulated lorry, but I am not sure how articulated the driver was.
Another village that is similarly ancient and has the same problem, and which probably creates as much correspondence for me, is Clare, a very pretty village on the Suffolk-Essex border. Only last week, I received the following email from a man called Bob Verguson, who did not know about this debate:
“We, the villages/residents along said A1092 Baythorne End to Long Melford road, require a stop to the 55 feet, 60-ton articulated lorries that are destroying our communities and infrastructure. The only lorries we should see in Clare are those delivering along the A1092 or along local side roads leading off the A1092, this is sadly not the case as approximately 92% of HGVs are passing through without stopping, merely using this road as a short cut…Clare alone has approximately 160 listed buildings”.
There is a pinch point in the village where lorries struggle to get through.
We see it all over the constituency. Nayland is another beautiful village near the Stour with the same problem, as are my two main market towns, Sudbury and Hadleigh. In Hadleigh, the problem is in Benton Street, which is narrow but is the main route by which my constituents access the A12 and Manningtree mainline station in order to get to London or Chelmsford. It has been a long-running problem. We thought that we might have solved it when I got Highways England to put new signage on the A12 to make clear the weight suitability and to say that HGVs should not use that route, but they continue to do so because of sat-nav, which is of course the same thing sending them down inappropriate roads in Lavenham.
I have had an email from a lady called Sue Monks, who lives on Benton Street. She makes a point about safety. In an incident two weeks ago,
“a resident on Benton Street had a car seat she was carrying knocked out of her arms by a passing vehicle whilst on the side of the pavement…Fortunately for her and us all, the seat was not occupied by a child.”
However, she emailed me the following day to confirm that there was a baby in it. Fortunately, it was a car and not an HGV. If it had been an HGV, I suspect that the event would have been tragic.
Finally, in Sudbury, the main market town in the constituency, a recent incident occurred at an intersection in a key retail part of my constituency. A lorry that should never have come down that road attempted the bend, severely damaging the frontage of a retail outlet selling ladies’ fashion. It is fair to say that in a town like that in a rural constituency, such things are a big deal. The incident occurred right next to the site of a major fire last summer, which was probably the biggest incident in my constituency since I was elected. It is demoralising for the town, and people want action to be taken.
I am not naive. I mentioned Harry Potter, but I know that there is no magic wand that can easily solve the problem. I have had frequent meetings with Suffolk County Council. Although we do not have Harry Potter, we have Councillor James Finch, who holds the transport portfolio for Suffolk. He is doing his best for the area. We are constantly considering what can be done, but there is one thing that the county council cannot control: sat-nav. My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet has hit upon the nub of the problem. He mentioned the TomTom Trucker and other solutions. I would have thought that the industry could come up with a solution, given all the technology available; I am interested to hear from the Minister whether there is anything that the Government can do to force the industry’s hand.
All I can say is that, whatever steps my hon. Friend wants to take to raise the issue and to keep up the pressure—forming action groups or whatever—I will be more than happy to support him. I commend him for securing this debate and hope that we can find a way to keep HGVs out of these beautiful ancient villages and stop them damaging the infrastructure that is key to quality of life for our constituents.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Sir Alan. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) on securing this debate. He made an excellent speech covering a wide range of subjects, and I commend him for it.
When the hon. Gentleman apologised for the technical nature of the debate, I started wondering whether I was the right person to sum up on behalf of the Scottish National party, as I am a bit of a technophobe at times. However, it was good to hear about GPS and how all these things come together. He clearly understands the heart of the issue. It is an important constituency matter. I am not very familiar with the local geography of Kent, but when I looked at a map before coming to this debate, I promised myself to get back to the area. It has been a long time since I travelled through there—I was much younger—on my way to continental trips.
In terms of some of the examples that the hon. Gentleman gave, things in my constituency are not quite so intense, because where I come from we obviously do not have that level of traffic or any ports. However, there are some small villages in my constituency with issues involving the HGVs that traverse them, so I can empathise on that basis, although on a much smaller scale. Householders complain about vibrations and say that frequent HGVs loosen manhole covers, which seems trivial but becomes a regular noise issue and an irritant for residents nearby. It is another hidden consequence of heavy traffic that people do not realise. In my area, I have asked for improved signage to keep HGVs on motorways and the dual carriageway network, so we will see where that goes. It is a slightly different matter from sat-nav, but the hon. Gentleman also rightly spoke about signage appropriate for HGVs.
Other hon. Members made some good points as well. The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) highlighted how serious the issue is in his constituency, where the average is two incidents a week. The hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) taught me a wee bit more about Harry Potter. Likewise, I do not know much about Harry Potter, but it must be serious when a Harry Potter film set is being damaged. He quoted clear, important personal testimonies about how dangerous and concerning the issue can be for his constituents. He is absolutely right to highlight those. The hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) correctly spoke about the general stress and pressure suffered by his constituents as a consequence of this problem.
The hon. Member for South Thanet correctly spoke about the good and bad uses of sat-nav. If it is used properly, it is generally safer, as drivers are less likely to get lost. Equally, drivers can become too dependent on sat-nav. At one time, it was normal practice to check a map before setting out in order to understand the geography of the route. He cracked a joke about being a Luddite and going back to looking at maps, but there is definitely merit in looking at a map. It made me remember a time when it was commonplace to try to drive, look at signage and look at a map in the passenger seat, which is clearly not the safest means of driving either.
It seems from previous Government consultations and reactions that there has been a reluctance to legislate. I agree with the suggestion about decriminalisation and allowing local authorities to undertake civil penalties, which would allow much greater local control, local signage, local understanding and local action. It would resonate well with constituents, who would understand and who like to see their local representatives taking action.
Another potential issue that I have identified ties in with the high frequency and volume of foreign drivers going through hon. Members’ constituencies due to the international nature of ports. There is a skills gap in the UK HGV industry at the moment. The industry estimates there is a shortfall of some 50,000 drivers. If the skills gaps are not being filled in this country, that will result in the roads being used even more frequently by drivers less familiar with the geography.
Royston Smith
It is interesting to hear foreign drivers and sat-navs talked about, although it is not all about sat-nav, as it happens. We in Southampton had to put in an engineered solution to prevent HGVs from going through a residential area. We had an expensive traffic regulation order and an expensive engineered solution, and within a couple of months a foreign driver following a sat-nav got stuck in the engineered solution that was there to prevent him going into the road. Is that something that the hon. Gentleman recognises?
Alan Brown
It is not something that I have personal experience of, but it ties in with the points made by the hon. Member for South Thanet about the need to update the technology, to share data and perhaps to make it mandatory not to use out-of-date equipment. If someone is caught using out-of-date equipment or non-HGV-compliant equipment, it could be taken away, and that would solve the problem that the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen has identified.
I mentioned the shortage of skills in the HGV industry. Perhaps the Government could subsidise a training course and help to fill the skills shortage in the UK. I think that would lead to safer driving as well.
Again, I commend the hon. Member for South Thanet for securing this debate, which has been excellent. He has identified solutions to the problems, which is commendable because it is too easy to identify a problem but not advise how to address it. Given that not much seems to have happened on the back of previous Government consultations, which we are now some years on from, I urge the Minister to consider the sensible recommendations that could lead to substantial improvements.
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) on securing this important debate. Before I address the points that have been made, it is worth recording that our thoughts are with the people of Brussels today. The security services have been bracing themselves for such an event—I guess all of us have—but when it does happen, it does not shock or affect us any less. This is a debate about transport and how we get about, and it is significant that today’s attack was about hitting the ways in which we get about. It was about hitting airports, metro stations, people trying to get to work, and people trying to see friends and families. We must have resolve, because it is no accident that terror tries to hit our ability to see each other, which is vital to society’s functioning. That is why terrorists must not succeed.
To return to the subject of today’s debate, the hon. Gentleman made some excellent points. He showed that he has a knowledge that well surpasses mine about, as he described it, the wizardry involved in GPS and other satellite navigation systems. Not only is he familiar with the high-tech end of it, but he was able to use the word “map”, which we do not do enough.
Other hon. Members made important points about the impact on their constituencies. The hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) mentioned something that I did not know about; he said that the problem has actually affected a Harry Potter set. If that is the case, it is certainly serious. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) also made some really important points. I welcome the Minister to the debate. I know roads are not her normal area of responsibility, but I have no doubt that she will respond to the debate in detail. I have a sneaking suspicion that she might even say something about how this problem affects her own constituency.
Our freight and logistics sector keeps the shelves in our shops stocked, and, in a literal sense, drives economic growth. Our lorry drivers in particular deserve to be commended for that. There are not many other occupations in which someone’s place of work means they are unclear about where they are going to get their next meal, where they will next sleep, and even when they will next get to use the toilet. We have heard today about the chaos that has been caused in Sandwich and in other parts of the country, often due to the inappropriate use of the wrong kind of GPS systems, which can have far-reaching consequences not only in the south-east but across the country. The problem not only puts the health, welfare and safety of drivers at risk but, as we have heard, can be a blight on the lives of residents in urban and non-urban areas alike, on the experience of other road users and on businesses.
The problem reflects the much wider challenge of better connecting our roads and vehicles using technology. Technology and innovation are important keys to better, smarter, greener motoring and road transport. To achieve that, we have to get the system working together far better than it is at the moment through information sharing, and enforcement has a role too. We need to consider the wider factors that contribute to congestion everywhere. I will come on to the factors that specifically affect South Thanet and Kent.
Royston Smith
We are talking now about sat-navs in HGVs, but eventually we will have driverless cars. That is the way we are going. All vehicles will depend on sat-navs, so does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is really important to sort this out sooner rather than later?
Richard Burden
The hon. Gentleman makes a really important point. I say that with my other hat on, because as well as being shadow Transport Minister, I chair the all-party motor group. The expansion of technology in the automotive industry has made us talk about the extent to which information systems are attached to motor vehicles, but given the way things are now moving, it might be more accurate to talk about motor vehicles being attached to information systems. That could apply to other modes of transport as well.
Technology is certainly changing the game as far as safety standards in the freight sector are concerned. The quality of bespoke HGV sat-navs, where they are used, offers everything from digital route shaping and traffic updates to active lane guidance and HGV-tailored road information. That is a good thing, but given the sheer volume of HGV traffic passing through places such as Sandwich, it is clear that top-of-the-range HGV-specific sat-navs can be really important. The hon. Member for South Thanet was right to pay tribute to the Freight Transport Association for promoting the use of such systems, but not enough drivers rely on such equipment. Too many HGV firms and drivers rely on generic sat-navs or free-to-use options.
It is important that Ministers consider the extent to which drivers take up bespoke sat-navs and what can be done about that. As the hon. Gentleman said, there was a sat-nav summit in 2012—I cannot remember the name of it, but he mentioned it—and it was not clear what flowed from that. I am concerned about the apparent absence of objective targets or a means of assessing the take-up of bespoke systems, which makes it difficult to track progress. It will be important to work with sat-nav manufacturers and the other technical companies involved to improve the accuracy of all the systems on the market. That was started in 2006 under the previous Government, as I think he mentioned, but progress has not been as fast as it should have been and certainly has not kept pace with the technology.
As the hon. Gentleman said, lobbying for better data sharing with manufacturers was included in Kent County Council’s freight action plan of 2012. I have a question for the Minister about that. What are the Department and Highways England doing to support local authorities in their communications with mapping and technology companies, to ensure that lorry-appropriate routes are better ingrained in as many sat-navs as possible—hopefully in all of them? With better information on all map applications, we will go some way towards improving the spread of knowledge.
We also need to look at some of the wider factors that I have referred to. Highways England must play a leading role in promoting joined-up thinking between local authorities, the emergency services and others. Unfortunately, recent incidents on the M5 and M6, where there were avoidably long closures of the whole road, show that things are not up to scratch in that respect at the moment. Without such strong partnership working and live information sharing through road signage, HGV drivers will inevitably make their own decisions, including about diversions.
A second question for the Minister, therefore, is what lessons her Department has taken from recent motorway closures about improving live traffic updates and the management of such incidents. I ask that because of a worrying response that I received to a recent parliamentary question, from which it appears that only half of all local authorities have a major incidents contingency plan in place with Highways England, a year on from its establishment. Surely sorting that out should be one of its priorities. Can the Minister get to the bottom of that, or ask her departmental colleagues to do so? Will they also find out why in so many places a course of action has still not been established for managing HGV traffic and other road users in the event of a motorway closure?
It is important for local authorities to have plans, but also that they should have the resources to enforce them. In a written answer last July the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), made it clear that all other traffic management policies, including issues to do with HGVs and sat-nav devices,
“are the responsibility of local traffic authorities”
and the police. Does the Minister share my view that following last week’s critical Select Committee on Transport report on road traffic law enforcement, there is a need to think again about that approach? The report found that the reduction in the number of offences being recorded does not represent a reduction in the number that are actually being committed, and that if enforcement of road traffic laws is to be effective, the decline in the number of specialist road policing officers must be halted. I look forward to the Government’s response to that report.
Concerns about traffic enforcement bring me back to the specific enforcement issues and other factors that affect the south-east and Kent. During a recent visit to talk to businesses in Kent, I heard at first hand about the traffic chaos that accompanied 32 days of Operation Stack last year. It was made clear to me that support and assistance from central Government are essential. That echoed what the Opposition have been saying consistently: this is not just an issue for local authorities, the police and others in Kent. Keeping the roads clear through Kent is an issue of national importance, and the Government’s preparations should reflect that.
I was therefore astonished to read late last week a written answer from the Department for Transport confirming that the Home Office will not provide any additional funding to avert a repetition this year of last year’s chaos. That is despite the fact that the police and crime commissioner for Kent stated in a press release in August that the Government had given her assurances that funding would be available. My question to the Minister—if she does not have the answer today, perhaps she will ask her colleague the Roads Minister to write to me—is whether the PCC for Kent was wrong about the assurances she said she was given in August, or whether that was a broken Government promise.
The situation certainly does not bode well for this year. Ministers have not satisfied anyone about what they are doing in the short term to prevent a repetition this year of last year’s scenes. There are plans for lorry parks and for improvements to slip roads at junction 10a, but they will not help this year. They are for future years. Without additional central Government assistance, it seems that the region is being left to handle congestion on its own. It cannot be said that last year was exceptional. HGVs are already being turned away from existing lorry parks, so how likely is it that the effect will be drivers rerouting back along roads and parking at inappropriate places? I asked the Roads Minister about his action plan for that in Transport questions recently, and I did not get any clear answers.
That issue is relevant to the debate, because the key point is how we ensure that traffic keeps moving through Kent. What is the Department doing to ensure that all road users, particularly HGV drivers arriving at cross-channel ports, know where to find the live traffic information they need, particularly at times of major snarl-ups such as the summer months? If there is a particular problem with drivers coming in from across the channel, how is the Department working with other countries, and road haulage companies in those countries, to make sure that all HGV drivers know of the routing restrictions in the south-east? How can technology be used to assist in that process as quickly as possible? Is Highways England reviewing again any short-term management techniques such as contraflow, with more notice for people to prepare, so that safety concerns can be addressed? Have the Department and Highways England talked to ferry companies about making the best use of their capacity in the event of lengthy episodes of congestion?
It is clear that the GPS problem that the hon. Member for South Thanet has rightly raised today exists not only in his area but throughout the country. It is an important issue that ties in closely with fundamental questions about the Government’s wider policies on HGVs and traffic management. They have serious questions to answer about technology and about how they can get hold of the problem. How can they expect existing laws and rules to be enforced if local authorities and the police do not have the necessary resources? How proactively will they promote the partnership working between local authorities, the police and the private sector that all hon. Members know is vital, particularly when we know that even on the issue of major incident contingency plans, Highways England has not yet reached agreement with more than half of the local authorities involved? There are serious questions to answer about the specific factors of congestion in the south-east that I have mentioned today, but there are wider issues as well, and I hope that the Minister will clarify some of them. Doing nothing is clearly not an option.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)
It is as always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. I associate myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) about what has shocked many of us in the transport world today. I happened to be giving a speech to a delegation from the Chinese airport authorities as the news came through, and it focused us once again on the issue of security. We are all vulnerable, across the country, and I pride myself on the work that our police forces, special forces and citizens do in keeping us safe. I know our thoughts and prayers are with those affected today.
My goodness, Sir Alan; we might have thought this would be a very dry debate, going by the title, but we have heard all sorts of things. We have heard an expert description of the GPS service, for which I am grateful. We have learned that the original barbican is actually in Sandwich. We have heard about the village of Clare—I feel a visit coming on; Claire for Clare strikes me as very exciting. We have heard about Godric’s Hollow and about TomTom Truckers, which sounds to some of us like a rather unsavoury form of specialty video, but there we are. It has been an interesting and informative debate, and I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) for doing his research and bringing in so many interesting points.
The SNP spokesman, the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown), showed up well briefed as always. I appreciated his comments about looking at maps. The shadow spokesman, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield, knows the subject of the debate inside out, but I was the Minister responsible for road freight in the previous Parliament, so I have some knowledge of the sector. Indeed, I was very proud of the work that we did in trying to reduce some of the burden of red tape on an industry that is, as he said, absolutely vital to the smooth running of the economy. It is a logistics sector in which we lead the world in many ways. As my hon. Friends will know, these are often small businesses with slim margins, and anything we can do to make them run more effectively is important.
As my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet pointed out, satellite navigation is becoming a ubiquity in our transport journeys. It is a defining innovation; we are all very reliant upon it. It allows people to move around much more easily and much more effectively. Indeed, according to the AA, drivers using sat-nav travel 16% fewer miles and spend 18% less time at the wheel than drivers without such systems.
I, on the other hand, have a sneaking sympathy for what the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun talked about. I like to get out my maps, plot the cross-country journeys and actually work out which way is north. That is not just because I was a geography student at university. Britain led the world in map making and mapping different continents, and it is a skill that we must not lose. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) pointed out, with technological innovations such as driverless vehicles and HGV platooning, there is a chance that the whole system will become dependent on the accuracy of the information being put into such systems and that makes the issue that we are debating even more important.
Although we directly associate satellite navigation with in-vehicle driving guidance, of course there are enormous applications in terms of aviation, fleet management and logistics. Indeed, on the railway, the use of GPS technology, both for managing train movements and for providing more information to customers, is an area of extraordinary innovation.
I turn now to some of the questions around sat-navs, HGVs and what the Government have been thinking and doing. It is in no one’s interest for HGV drivers to make the wrong decision or to rely on inaccurate information. We heard tellingly and powerfully this afternoon what happens when things go wrong: tight corners; historic houses; and congestion. We have all seen the jack-knifed lorry that tried to get through the tight road bridge. Indeed, in my own constituency, we had an almost tragic incident when a large lorry tried to get across a bridge and knocked a piece of masonry on to the mainline track between London and the west country. It was only because of a lot of very quick thinking on behalf of the train crew that an accident was avoided.
Consequently, we have been very assiduous in this area, particularly in linking freight associations, local authorities and sat-nav companies to ensure that responsible HGV drivers are aware of the issue and have the latest information available to them. Indeed, properly equipped lorry drivers now have the tools to avoid low bridges and narrow lanes, and of course that saves them fuel, time and money. No lorry driver wants to be sitting there blocking a village street; that is not a pleasant experience for anyone. Therefore, as we have heard, there are specialist sat-navs that assist.
Neither central Government nor individual local authorities have direct powers over the routing of sat-nav devices, but sat-nav companies and users can help to ensure that they have appropriate routes by ensuring that their device maps are up to date. I confess that my hybrid vehicle had an in-dashboard sat-nav and I do not think that I ever once updated the maps. I hold my hand up in shame now as I say that. That was, of course, before my ministerial career and making that admission might actually be the end of it. There is an element of personal responsibility and indeed corporate responsibility to make sure that the maps are up to date.
Of course, the routing guidance is only ever advisory. Motorists, including HGV drivers, are responsible for determining the best route for their journey and for determining whether there are appropriate road conditions, even if a route is signposted as being appropriate and open. Drivers are responsible, of course, for ensuring that they follow routes that are legal—that they do not breach height or weight limits, which are set and enforced by local highway authorities and the police.
I have some sympathy—again, based on the experience of my own constituency—about the ping-pong there can be between a local authority and the highways agency as to who is responsible for signage on a particular road and the consequences of re-signing a particular road, which may push congestion over the border into another constituency or on to other roads that are less suitable, so it is not a trivial exercise to get the signage right. Clearly, however, when it is done, it can work.
What we must not ignore is the ability of GPS data to provide such an enormous level of innovation, both in transport and logistics, and in society in general. On trying to mandate specific technologies, such as commercial sat-navs or other route guidance systems, that is difficult. In my view, the heavy hand of Government mandating anything in the technological space tends to act as a drag on innovation, and by the time we have tried to solve one problem the world has moved on and we are all using entirely different systems or devices. My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet referred to other competing global systems that may well be operational within the next few years and it would be a difficult process then to start that conversation with those specific road users.
The Government still believe that the private sector remains best placed to develop new products and services, and the market—sensibly regulated—should determine whether those succeed. However, I also want to pay tribute to organisations such as the Freight Transport Association, because there are very responsible industry bodies out there that work with Government and local authorities and that are absolutely committed to making sure that their members are using the most appropriate systems. It is important that we continue to improve those communications and that co-operation to ensure that everyone is using the right technology and equipment.
There is an Act—the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions Act 2002—that equips highway authorities to apply warnings and restrictions to the parts of the local network that they manage where they feel it is appropriate for HGVs to avoid using inappropriate routes. As I have mentioned, that can be a complicated exercise, but it is important. One of the things that the last Government were proud of doing was making it easier for local communities to do things such as applying particular speed limits and putting up signage to give communities the ability to manage their road conditions more appropriately.
There is more work happening. The Government are taking direct action now to improve the quality and sharing of transport data; £3 million has been dedicated to create a digital road map that will enable better data sharing between local authorities and service providers. The map is being developed by the Ordnance Survey and it will be launched later this year. It will include information such as road widths, traffic calming measures, and height and weight restrictions, which could then be linked to other public sector data sets, such as planned road works and cycle paths.
Unlike some of the Ordnance Survey data in the past, I believe that this will be open data, so it can be taken up by the various providers of information to the mapping companies, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet pointed out. It is a really important step forward to take Ordnance Survey data, which is of very high quality, and to put it on to the existing digital maps, which in some cases are not of particularly high quality or not particularly detailed about local conditions. I think that this has big potential to improve the quality and accuracy of the routing advice offered by sat-navs, as well as to cut bureaucracy.
James Cartlidge
Obviously, I agree with the Minister about not wanting to regulate if we do not need to, and I am aware of the point about signs. However, my experience is that signs often do not work with HGVs. If, as the years progress, we continue to have these problems, if the signage is not stopping them and if we have these villages and areas that are being damaged by HGVs that, if you like, are abusing routes because of sat-nav, do the Government have any power to intervene with sat-nav companies to try to ensure that they can guide lorries on to the correct routes?
Claire Perry
I do not believe that we have the statutory power to do so currently. Again, this is one of those slightly concerning paths down which to go, but I can certainly look to see whether anything has ever been proposed for the statute book on that basis. We talk about technology, but it is not in anyone’s interests, including those of a fleet manager, to have an HGV trying to force itself down a road. It will be entirely obvious if an HGV is trying to do that long before the problem arises and any responsible fleet manager would then communicate with that driver and say, “Where do you think you’re going? This is absolutely not appropriate.” Again, I think that we need to use the technology as the solution to some of these issues, while recognising the problems related to the technology.
Richard Burden
The Minister is right that there is no easy or off-the-shelf solution to this problem, but it seems to me that the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) made an important point that is worth considering. While it may not be appropriate to make the use of satellite navigation systems mandatory inside HGVs, if HGVs have a system in operation, should they not be required to have one that is fit for purpose, so that this becomes a compliance issue to do with having the right kind of system, rather than making it mandatory to have a system in the first place?
Claire Perry
The hon. Gentleman’s points are often very sensible but, in my mind, they can also often lead to a sort of slightly dystopian world of lots of checks and balances, with organisations set up to do in-cab checks, and that is entirely what we do not want to deliver. What we want is an industry that believes in being responsible and has the tools to do so.
The point my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet made about having a little lorry symbol come up, in the same way as a car, or in my case a bicycle, symbol comes up is brilliant. The new technology—the open mapping system—will enable that. What I have instructed my officials to do—rather cheekily, as they no longer work directly for me—is to ensure that the Freight Transport Association and other bodies are given every opportunity to see the mapping process, consider how they might use it and exercise their powers to make recommendations—as has been mentioned, they have a recommended list of sat-navs. I would like them to be involved and, indeed, that offer applies cross-party to any hon. Member here—it is open to anyone who wants to see the information and be involved. This is a really important step forward in solving many of the problems about which we are all concerned.
It does not stop there. The road investment strategy sets out, finally, a long-term investment strategy for roads. That is so important. It includes a £150 million ring-fenced innovation fund that enables Highways England to develop technologies, including sat-nav, and approaches for a smoother, smarter and more sustainable road network. There is an element of driverless and co-operative vehicle technologies, and of improving the information and data that help drivers to plan their journeys.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield made a fair point about what happens when roads are closed. I think that we were all surprised by what happened. With my rail hat on I can say that any delays like the ones he mentioned would have led to outrage among rail passengers across the country and demands for compensation. Somehow, we often accept that roads are closed, and there are lessons to be learned perhaps from other parts of the infrastructure.
A traffic information strategy developed by Highways England was published in January 2016. It sets out how the agency will work more closely with local authorities to integrate journey planning across the network and improve communications. I am aware, of course, that the Office of Rail Regulation now includes an element of road regulation and I would like to ask my officials to check whether the duty to inform—the duty to work with local authorities—is part of the office’s statutory powers.
The Highways England strategy also focuses on further development of the Traffic England website as a trusted source of information for road users in planning their journeys, and on sharing data from the National Traffic Operations Centre so that there is real-time information.
In conclusion, this debate is fascinatingly important and relevant to us all, in all our constituencies no matter where they are. I hope that some of my points have reassured my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet that the Government are absolutely committed to working more closely with the private sector and that there is real money backing that commitment. I invite all hon. Members to review the £3 million digital road map when it is perhaps in beta format, to see how we could encourage road haulage associations in our constituencies to take advantage of the new technology.
Alan Brown
I know that it might have seemed a tangential point, but I asked about the skills gap in the HGV industry and about Government support for filling it.
Claire Perry
I am delighted to respond to that. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We had an influx of HGV drivers from other parts of the world and many of them returned there when the economy turned down. It has, therefore, been a challenge to recruit and retain drivers. There is ongoing work into what could be done to make the cost of training more acceptable, for example. As the only lady in the room who represents a constituency, may I say that women do not want to be long-distance drivers partly because some of the rest facilities are absolutely atrocious? I have encouraged many HGV companies to realise—indeed the responsible ones do—that there is an enormous talent pool of people out there, for whom long-distance driving could be an appropriate career but who will not do it if they have to relieve themselves behind a bush at a rest stop. Raising the terms and conditions and working practices of many parts of the industry could attract non-traditional drivers to what is an important and growing part of the British economy.
Sir Alan Meale (in the Chair)
Mr Mackinlay, Andy Warhol said some years ago that everyone gets 15 minutes of fame, and you have about that amount of time—or you may wish to respond briefly.
Craig Mackinlay
I thank you, Sir Alan, for your excellent chairmanship. It would have been nice to have a few more Members with us, but there is activity elsewhere. It would be stretching it to think that I will speak for a further 15 minutes—I will not delay Members for that long—but I will make some comments about the excellent contributions made.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) laid out very well the damage to the fabric of our great nation that we face from many HGVs being inappropriately used. My hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) added a road safety dimension to the debate. Road safety is key, particularly at peak times when children are out of school. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) mentioned that, even though we do substantial road improvements or have restrictions in order to do engineered solutions, those are overcome by the automaton-like, slavish adherence to the voice that comes out of the machine—I think we are all prone to that.
I am grateful that the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) took part in the debate. I am not sure whether the shortage of drivers in the UK is relevant to the core of the debate, but we do have a shortage of available drivers as the HGV industry in this country is growing at all times and the volume of HGV traffic is only increasing. That gets to the heart of why the problem we face with sat-nav use is so relevant. I very much thank the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden), who brought to the debate a high level of knowledge about various aspects of the road industry.
Turning to my hon. Friend the Minister, I was very encouraged that there was an area I did not know about. I go away with some additional technical knowledge, that Ordnance Survey is spending £3 million on open source mapping, which could be vital to further improving the quality of data available to mapping companies. Underneath all of the systems, no matter whether they are nomadic or on personal digital assistants or smartphones, is the fundamental map data.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen mentioned the potential for driverless cars, which are much in the news. I would not like to think about how driverless HGVs in Sandwich might get on—we will come to that, perhaps, in 10 years’ time. I think that we stand here today in awe of some of the technology that we do not really understand but regularly use, and on the concept of driverless cars, we can foresee the potential for companies going across every road, accumulating data such as widths and heights, and then feeding it back almost immediately into a database system and updating maps almost in real time.
I understand the concerns about more overbearing legislation. I am not for that; markets can decide things effectively and rather more rapidly that Governments. But the plea, I think, from the Chamber this afternoon to the manufacturers of the nomadic devices and the software is that they please put on that little lorry symbol. I realise that that would be a commercial decision, because the same machine for HGV use is often sold for three times the price, but it would solve, at a stroke, many of the problems. We understand that no HGV driver wants to be caught down that small road or to be hitting that bridge or historic building—that is a given—and that additional button could relieve many of the problems.
I thank hon. Members for taking part in the debate, and I thank you, Sir Alan, for your forbearance.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered GPS satellite navigation and heavy goods vehicles.
Daesh: Persecution of Christians
(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered persecution of Christians and other religious minorities under Daesh.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. May I clarify the subject of the debate? The wording I applied for was “Genocide under Daesh of Christians and other religious minorities”. It is regrettable that, without any discussion with me, the motion was changed, although I understand it was not changed by the Speaker’s office. I shall say no more about the motion, except to clarify that the violence of ISIL, or Daesh, as we now call it, rages against a number of minority religious groups in addition to Christians, including the Yazidis and minority Muslim groups. Space prohibited me from referring to them by name in the motion.
The 1948 UN convention on genocide makes it clear that genocide is the systematic killing or serious harming of people because they are part of a recognisable group. The specific legal meaning of genocide is
“acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.
The convention specifies certain actions that can contribute to genocide, such as killing, forcible transfer, preventing births and causing serious bodily or mental harm.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing this matter to Westminster Hall for consideration. It is a massive subject that warrants a 90-minute debate, and I am disappointed that it was not allocated one. Nevertheless, we have half an hour. I know that the hon. Lady, along with others present, shares my concern that Christians are given the ultimatum: “convert or die”. It is a choice between continuing to have religious beliefs and leaving the country or dying. Genocide is the only word we can use for that.
Fiona Bruce
The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point and is quite right. As I stand here today, religious minorities are suffering horrendous atrocities at the hands of this murderous cult in Syria, Iraq and the other countries of the middle east where Daesh has a strong presence. The number of Christians in Iraq has reduced from 1.4 million to just over a quarter of a million in just a few years. The Bishop of Aleppo said this week that two thirds of Syrian Christians have been either killed or driven away from his country.
Acts committed by ISIS against Christians include the assassination of church leaders, mass murders, torture, kidnapping for ransom, sexual enslavement, systematic rape, forced conversions and the destruction of churches. We know about the mass graves of the Yazidis, and about crucifixions, forced marriages and the kidnapping of women and girls, some of them as young as eight, many of them raped mercilessly, month after month, until their bodies are in tatters. We know about children being beheaded in front of their families for refusing to convert.
Jim Shannon
The hon. Lady is being very gracious in giving way. Before the debate, I asked her if I could intervene to say that the Yazidis in particular have been reduced from 500,000 to 200,000 in Iraq. Nobody in the west put out their hand to help or assist, as they should have. The Yazidis have been in the Kurdish camps along the borders of Syria, Iraq and Turkey. They are a small group who have been persecuted, pursued and discriminated against, and their ethnic and religious freedoms have been abused. Perhaps the Minister could respond to that point as well.
Fiona Bruce
Again, the hon. Gentleman makes a strong point.
We are sometimes at risk of being desensitised by the horrors under Daesh. They are so extreme that their evil seems almost fictional. But for those who are suffering—people who lived lives like us just a short time ago—they are very real.
Surely one thing is becoming increasingly clear. Bearing in mind the definition of genocide to which I referred a moment ago, can anyone now seriously doubt that Daesh’s actions are genocidal? Nor, surely, can anyone seriously doubt that Daesh is trying to destroy minorities such as the Yazidis, in the words of the convention,
“in whole or in part”.
As Bishop Angaelos, a general bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, has said:
“How can we not declare Genocide if Christians are suffering the same fate, at the same time, under the same conditions, at the hands of the same perpetrators?”
The entire population of Christians in the city of Mosul in Iraq, all 60,000 of them, have been effectively eradicated by Daesh—gone, fled or dead.
Daesh’s intentions in perpetrating its violence are a matter of record, as reports have made clear repeatedly. It regularly makes public statements of a genocidal nature, such as the following message, which was broadcast on its Al-Bayan radio station:
“We say to the defenders of the cross, that future attacks are going to be harsher and worse...The Islamic State soldiers will inflict harm on you with the grace of Allah. The future is just around the corner.”
As the US Secretary of State said just last week, after a unanimous vote by the House of Representatives to declare a genocide by 393 votes to none:
“Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions—in what it says, what it believes, and what it does…The fact is that Daesh kills Christians because they are Christians; Yezidis because they are Yezidis; Shia because they are Shia.”
I submit that the legal criteria for genocide have been amply satisfied. Not only have the US Government now said so, but so have the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, the Pope, the US Congress, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and 75 Members of both Houses of Parliament when we wrote to the Prime Minister, including the former chief of staff and former head of MI5. A group of leading QC peers also recently wrote to the Prime Minister on this issue. All agree that the crimes of Daesh are genocide.
Why is it so important that we, as Members of Parliament, also collectively define these crimes as genocide? Because doing so would be more than mere verbiage—more than mere words. It would bring into play a whole series of mechanisms that can strengthen the response of the international community to challenge this evil force. The convention on genocide is clear that such a declaration brings with it obligations to prevent, protect and punish. I suggest that our making such a declaration would challenge the 147 countries that are party to the convention to step up and act on their obligations to help to prevent further atrocities, to protect those who are suffering, and to work towards punishing the perpetrators.
Jim Shannon
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way again. She has outlined clearly the need for us to have this debate. It is an opportunity for us to speak out on behalf of our Christian brothers and sisters throughout the whole world who have been persecuted because of their beliefs. We have the chance to be a voice for the voiceless. I congratulate the hon. Lady again on bringing this debate to Westminster Hall for our consideration.
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. Before I heard the start of her speech, I did not know the original wording of her motion. May I press her to submit the motion again and, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, request more time for the debate and possibly a vote in the Chamber? I, too, was a signatory to a letter to the Prime Minister on this subject, and I think there are many more parliamentarians who would welcome the opportunity to debate it at length and to vote on it.
Fiona Bruce
My hon. Friend pre-empts me. He is absolutely right. I suggest that such a motion should be worded in the following way: “That this House believe that religious minorities in the middle east are suffering genocide.” Crucially, that would mean that those who have participated in such vile crimes would know that they face justice and the full weight of genocide law when they are tried before the International Criminal Court. Must the relevant conflicts end before we work to bring to justice those who are responsible for these terrible atrocities? How long will that be? How much of the evidence will have disappeared? How many of the witnesses will have gone?
The international community’s record is not strong on this issue. Our incumbent Foreign Secretary and the previous Foreign Secretary have both lamented on the record the international community’s response to previous genocidal suffering. In 2015, the Foreign Secretary said that
“the memory of what happened in Srebrenica leaves the international community with obligations that extend well beyond the region…It demands that we all try to understand why those who placed their hope in the international community on the eve of genocide found it dashed.”
On the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, William Hague, then Foreign Secretary, said:
“The truth is that our ability to prevent conflict is still hampered by a gap between the commitments states have made and the reality of their actions.”
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. She talked about waiting until the end of the conflict. On 17 December 1942, the then Foreign Secretary made clear in the House what Britain’s attitude would be at the end of hostilities to those who had committed the massacre of the Jews in Europe. Does my hon. Friend think that a similar statement today of what the international community’s attitude will be at the conclusion of hostilities to those who are committing genocide in the middle east would be welcome?
Fiona Bruce
Indeed I do.
We must learn the lessons of the past. It is right that the international community should shoulder a burden of guilt for failing the victims in Rwanda. Those of us who have been to Rwanda a number of times know how many people still suffer as a result of our failure to act promptly then. Let us act now and be bold enough to call this genocide what it is. Let us avoid the regret that so many now feel about that past failure and not acting more promptly to go to the aid of those who suffered so severely in Rwanda in the early 1990s.
What has been our response to the middle eastern genocide perpetrated by Daesh to date? In the time I have left, I want to talk about the Government’s response, as I understand it—the Minister may correct me. I believe that the Government say that they have a long-standing policy that any judgments on whether genocide has occurred are a matter for the international judicial system. Their approach appears to be to refrain from expressing an opinion on whether genocide has occurred until the international judicial system makes such a declaration. However, why can Parliament not make a declaration?
I respectfully suggest to the Minister that there are perhaps four reasons—probably more—why the Government should reconsider their approach. First, I find it remarkable that the UK is willing to declare itself not competent to judge whether the conditions for genocide, which I have described, have been met, particularly in a case as clear as this. If the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the US Government and the European Parliament, none of which are judicial bodies, can declare a genocide, why cannot we?
Secondly, as I understand it, the Government have previously been willing to express their view on genocides that neither the UN nor the International Criminal Court have ruled upon, such as the case of Cambodia. Thirdly, the Government’s approach is frustratingly circular. We are told that nothing can be done until the ICC or the UN declares genocide, but historically neither have been willing to do so without international pressure. This is potentially a recipe for doing nothing. I know that the Minister is an extremely genuine person and is deeply concerned about matters of justice of this nature, but is it acceptable for this country to effectively risk doing nothing on this particular issue of declaring genocide—I am sure that is not true elsewhere—when we sincerely wish to pursue an ethical foreign policy?
Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, we have a moral duty to speak out and do what we can for the religious minorities that, even now, are being horribly persecuted at the brutal hands of Daesh. Staying silent in the face of such evil is not an option.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. What she says about silence is important. The way that Christians, Yazidis and other minorities are being targeted in the areas controlled by Daesh is appalling. I hear a lot about it from my constituents, but I do not hear about it more widely than that. Encouraging further discussions in this House would help to raise awareness of the persecution of Christians and other minorities.
Fiona Bruce
I thank the hon. Lady for that comment. The issue certainly needs much closer attention in this place and more broadly in our country. The dignity of the people who are suffering so horribly cries out for it.
I want to digress for a moment, to refer to an announcement that was made in the House last Wednesday. The Minister may be able to assist us by clarifying it. Many Members were left with the impression that only states can commit genocide. I have the greatest respect for the Minister of State, Department for International Development, my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Mr Swayne), and I have no doubt that he gave that response with total sincerity, but will the Minister responding to today’s debate clarify the advice that he was given? As I understand it—I stand to be corrected—all that is needed for a non-state party to be found guilty of genocide is for the UN Security Council to confer jurisdiction on the ICC, and for the ICC to agree that a genocide is taking place. That cannot happen without lobbying from our Government, so we should press the UN Security Council to take action accordingly.
An amendment to the Immigration Bill was introduced yesterday in another place. If passed, it would have presumed that victims of genocide meet certain conditions for asylum in the UK, and it would have put that determination in the hands of a High Court judge. I watched that debate, after which the amendment was narrowly defeated late last night. Although some of the contributors had reservations about its wording, which I believe is why they felt they could not support it, the support for it was much wider than the vote reflected on the principle that we need to call these atrocities what they are: genocide.
I am focusing on that narrow point today. I seek support for a motion to be introduced in the terms that I referred to—“That this House believe that religious minorities in the middle east are suffering genocide.” That would enable us to refer the matter to the UN, so that the International Criminal Court could proceed with examining what is happening in the middle east.
In the debate in the other place last night, the Minister responding to the debate proposed that
“the appropriate way forward would be to consider a Motion of this House, directed to Her Majesty’s Government as to how they should address or not address the issues that pertain here with regard to whether there has been genocide.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 March 2016; Vol. 769, c. 2177.]
If my understanding that such a motion could be brought before the House is correct, will the Minister consider whether it would be appropriate for the Government to bring it forward? As he knows, such a motion introduced by a Back Bencher would have little chance of being considered by the House in the immediate future. Will the Minister consider whether the Government should introduce such a motion and arrange for a vote on this issue? If I understood the Minister in the other place correctly, the Government proposed that amicable solution. May I now press for it to be made possible?
Will the Minister confirm that we should be pushing for international recognition of, and action against, these unspeakable crimes, and for them to be declared as genocide? We can and should express an opinion, so that we can lead the charge at the international level and bring those who are committing such atrocious evils to justice.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Tobias Ellwood)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Sir Edward. Before I respond to this important debate, may I take a minute to bring the House up to date with events in Brussels today?
An appalling and savage terrorist attack took place earlier today. The Prime Minister has spoken to the Prime Minister of Belgium to give our sympathies and condolences to the Belgian people. We stand with them at this very difficult time. We are in close contact with the authorities in Brussels, and embassy staff are assisting one injured Briton. We are ready to support any further British nationals who may have been affected. We are aware of reports that Daesh has claimed responsibility. Obviously, along with the international community, we are investigating such reports, but at the moment we cannot confirm anything. Cobra met this morning, and there will be further meetings tomorrow.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), whose debate I welcome, that 30 minutes does not do justice to this subject. It is not enough time to say what I would like to say—I can already see that I have only nine minutes left, and even complaining about the amount of time available is wasting more time in which I should be getting on to the issues—[Interruption.] I am already being heckled from a sedentary position.
I thank my hon. Friend for raising the issue. I am sorry to hear that the wording of her motion was altered. I am not aware that it had anything to do with us—I do not think we have that privilege, or I am sure that I would change many motions, although not in this case. I congratulate her on securing this important debate. No one can fail to be moved by the harrowing stories of Daesh’s brutality and the way in which Christians, Yazidis and others have been singled out for persecution, and I pay tribute to both Government and Opposition Members who have campaigned so hard to ensure that minority voices are heard in the fight against Daesh.
In the middle east, we are now witnessing systematic and horrific attacks against Christians and others on the basis of their religion, beliefs or ethnicity. Tragically, the very survival of communities that have existed peacefully in the region for centuries is now at risk. Members on both sides of the House are united in our condemnation of Daesh’s inhumane treatment of minorities. It is also right that we condemn Daesh’s equally brutal treatment of the majority Muslim population in Iraq and Syria.
Today, we have heard appalling examples of Daesh’s abuses. The Government want to see accountability for those abuses and have supported efforts to document them. The UK co-sponsored the Human Rights Council resolution mandating the investigation of Daesh abuses, which were also recorded and condemned in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s 2014 human rights and democracy report. We will do the same in the 2015 report, which is to be published in April. The Government are directly funding training for Syrian activists to document abuses to a standard suitable for criminal prosecution. I pay tribute to those involved in that work for their courage.
Turning to the core of what my hon. Friend has discussed today, I understand the urge for us to declare that there is genocide. As the Prime Minister said in the House yesterday, however, we maintain that genocide should be a matter of legal rather than political opinion, although there is clearly a growing body of evidence that terrible crimes have been committed. It is vital that all of us to continue to expose and condemn Daesh’s atrocities and, above all, do everything in our power to stop them, but we maintain that it is right for any assessment of matters of international law to remain in the hands of the appropriate judicial authorities. I assure the House that the Government are working hard with our international partners to ensure that Daesh is held to account for its crimes and that those who have suffered at its hands receive justice.
To be clear, I associate myself firmly with the comments made by Secretary of State John Kerry that no Government are judge, jury or prosecutor—we are not in a position to make such statements. It is for the international criminal courts to do so. However, we are participating in collecting the data, preserving the documents and providing the evidence that will be needed to take things forward. It is important and of symbolic value that international justice is seen to take place, with a commitment by the international community to see accountability for the most serious crimes of international concern.
The matter is complex, however, and an awful lot of due diligence needs to take place, not only on genocide but on the whole issue of crimes against humanity, as my hon. Friend is aware. She has done extremely well to bring the matter before the House today, and I absolutely encourage a further, wider debate with a vote in the House to continue the process.
Michael Tomlinson
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way—I am conscious of the time. Given his experience of military service in the Balkans and of Rwanda, does he see the importance of debating the subject further, as he has just said? Will he support a debate taking place in Government time, with a vote?
Mr Ellwood
My hon. Friend makes his point fully, but it is up to the usual channels to make any decision. I firmly believe that we are not doing justice to the subject; we are only skimming the surface of such an important matter. We have touched on Rwanda, the Balkans and so forth, and, indeed, following Rwanda, the world recognised the duty of care on leaders—again, a legal stipulation—to look after the people under their remit. That failed in Rwanda. I would very much welcome a further debate on the subject, so that the world can hear what this Parliament thinks and the Government’s reaction to that, and so that we can pursue and continue the process. I welcome that and hope that today is only a beginning.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
We are at one in this Chamber in our horror of the reports that we have heard. Will the Minister tell us precisely what he expects us to be voting on after a debate in the main Chamber, and what action would be recommended?
Mr Ellwood
That is not for the Government; it is for the Backbench Business Committee to make such a judgment. Any debate would be an indication of the mood or spirit of Parliament, of where we would like to go, and of what we would like the permanent members of the UN Security Council to discuss. It could lead to recommendations for action, perhaps through the international criminal courts or any number of other avenues.
Mr Ellwood
I have two and a half minutes left, so I will give way only briefly.
Kevin Foster
I thank the Minister for giving way. He is being generous, given the time. In 1942, this House made a solemn resolution that those responsible for such crimes should not escape retribution. Would the Government be minded to support such a resolution in this instance?
Mr Ellwood
I will write to hon. Members with details on questions to which I have not replied, but I must conclude.
I have given as much indication as I can of the direction of travel that we would like to go in. I am pleased that the Foreign Secretary has made his comments, and I repeat—I do not want to get myself into any trouble, so I am looking around carefully—that we are not judge or jury here. It is not for the Government to call this, which hon. Members will perhaps recognise as a frustration. It is important that voices are heard to make it clear what the expectations are and where we should be going on what is happening in Iraq and Syria.
To truly defeat Daesh, to eradicate its ideology, and to secure long-term peace and security in the region, we must demonstrate through our words and actions our support for all communities, whether majority or minority, Shi’a or Sunni Muslims, Christians, Yazidis, Kurds or others. We will continue to do all we can to liberate the people of Iraq and Syria from the persecution and appalling violence that they face from Daesh. We must all continue to expose Daesh for its criminal and fraudulent betrayal of Islam. In the spirit in which my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton introduced the debate, I also hope that we can take important steps towards bringing Daesh to justice on the international stage.
Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
I am sure the House would want to associate itself with the Minister’s comments about the atrocity in Brussels.
Question put and agreed to.
Macur Review of Historical Child Abuse
(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Macur Review into historic child abuse.
Diolch yn fawr iawn, Sir Edward. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship today. I am sure we are all saddened by the news we are hearing from Brussels.
I will start by putting on record my thanks to the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) for his statement last week. I also congratulate him on his new role in government. I also congratulate the Secretary of State for Wales and the Minister on their promotions. I look forward to working constructively with both of them in what I am sure will be an eventful year. I also pay tribute to many colleagues across the House for their work, especially the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), who I am delighted to see with us this afternoon. She has campaigned tirelessly for the victims and survivors of child abuse in Wales and beyond.
The publication of the Macur review’s report was long overdue. For the survivors of these abhorrent events, it represented hope: that they would see justice; that their accounts of events would be vindicated; that the nagging doubts and conspiracy theories would be either verified or dispelled; and that the whole would be conducted disinterestedly without fear or favour. Unfortunately, the report, which includes more than 600 redactions, adds virtually nothing to our understanding of how the state failed so many children over so many years in north Wales.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
I am sure that, like me, the hon. Lady has already had survivors contact her to say how disappointed they were. The report was their hope that there would be recognition, but all it does is leave unanswered questions still unanswered.
Liz Saville Roberts
I agree. It seems to have been very much a matter of process and documentation, with survivors and victims as a second consideration. I will return to that.
The report culminates in a bland list of eight conclusions, which mainly state that Waterhouse was necessary, agree with the instigation of this inquiry, say that neither is a substitute for criminal proceedings and that the experience of giving evidence is difficult for survivors. The six recommendations include the platitudes that inquiries should be “above reproach”; that evidence should not be lost; that there is no purpose in further inquiries; and about the hazards of hindsight. I will return to recommendation 5 later.
Macur was the third review of its kind after the Jillings panel and the Waterhouse tribunal. We will have to wait a further two and a half years before we learn of the findings of Goddard’s independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in particular criticised the timescale, saying that despite the “drawn out process”, the report reveals “barely anything”. It expressed concern that that might deter victims from coming forward during the ongoing Operation Pallial.
I turn to redactions: the removal of names and details by which people might be identified. On my count—I may be wrong, although I counted twice—there are 633 redactions in the report. Although many will be duplications, the Secretary of State and the Minister must appreciate that that number is extremely high. The previous Secretary of State for Wales, the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire, said in his statement last week that redactions had been “kept to a minimum”. While I, and I am sure many people here, accept that some redactions must be made, particularly given the ongoing court proceedings and the potential for further actions, I put it to the House that to claim that redactions in the report have been kept to a minimum is frankly disingenuous.
I am particularly concerned about the extremely high number of redactions in chapters 7 and 8 on freemasonry and establishment figures respectively. Lady Justice Macur made recommendations in her report to the Secretaries of State on what should be redacted in the published report. She said:
“It is for the Secretaries of State to determine any further redaction of my Report weighing public interest with the caution”.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. One of the few positives to come out of Waterhouse was the setting up of the Children’s Commissioner for Wales. Given the strong statement that the commissioner made, does she agree that the Government must be clear about the methodology that arrived at so many redactions?
Liz Saville Roberts
I agree entirely. I will refer to what the Children’s Commissioner for Wales said anon and I hope that the Minister will be in a position to respond to her call as well as those we are making today.
The previous Secretary of State also said that the rationale behind making the redactions, as set out in the letters to the Secretaries of State by the Treasury Solicitor and the director general of propriety and ethics, “explain the reasons…fully”. However, I put it to the Minister that those justifications are weak and bland. I sympathise with the views expressed by victims and by the Children’s Commissioner for Wales, as just mentioned, who believe that the UK Government need to be more open about the process by which redactions were made. First, I ask the Minister to tell the House how many redactions were made in addition to those suggested by Lady Macur. Secondly, will he publish further information about why those additional redactions were made and what the process was in coming to a decision on them?
Especially alarming—possibly more so—are the numerous serious cases of missing or destroyed evidence at several different points during the various inquiries. Lady Justice Macur’s report refers to individuals who have implied in written evidence that they hold information about abusers who were not investigated by the police or the tribunal. She states that following an interview with—redacted name—she made a request for materials said by that person to be relevant to the review and stored by a solicitor. She goes on to say that that solicitor had since left the relevant practice and that the files in question were destroyed. She even says that the person at the firm dealing with her request recalled that, before the files were destroyed, the solicitor in question had visited the office and
“may have taken any documents he considered worthy of retention.”
The report states that the solicitor in question had failed to respond to correspondence from Lady Macur. Does the Minister consider that a satisfactory conclusion to that line of inquiry? Is simply ignoring correspondence until the problem goes away all one needs to do to get away with a crime? Even ignoring the allegation that the solicitor may have removed evidence, is the Minister satisfied that it would be standard practice to destroy recently archived data?
Unfortunately, that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to missing or destroyed evidence. The greatest cause for concern in relation to the process and documentation is of course the fate of the Waterhouse tribunal’s evidence originally handed over to the Welsh Office in 1998. Those documents—it says this in the report—were supposed to be archived securely for 75 years. That did not happen. The evidence received scant respect at the Welsh Office and it was then shuffled over to the Welsh Government.
This is simply a catalogue of data mismanagement: dependency on technology that becomes dated and corrupted; destruction of hardware and tapes; boxes of evidence in disorder; and a reference index that lists 718 boxes while only 398 were initially made available. It remains unclear how many boxes of evidence were finally handed over to Lady Justice Macur, but documents were still coming to light on 1 December last year. It should be noted that the report was presented on 10 December. That methodology does not instil confidence.
The significance of the destroyed computer database cannot be overestimated. That was the record of all documentation. Against that database, if extant, it would have been possible to come to a view as to whether significant evidence was present or missing. Macur states:
“It is impossible to confidently report that I have seen all the documentation that was before the Tribunal.”
We cannot therefore come empirically to an opinion on whether material has been lost, removed or concealed.
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
I interviewed six young men some years ago in the Cynon Valley. Those boys were taken to north Wales, and that may be true of boys from other parts of south Wales as well. This is talked about as the north Wales abuse inquiry, but it is sometimes forgotten that the children came from all over Wales. Those boys’ reports were harrowing, as Members can imagine. It is an absolute disgrace that there are so many missing documents; I entirely agree with the hon. Lady. Where have they gone? Who is responsible? Lots of the evidence given to the Jillings report, which preceded the Waterhouse inquiry, has also gone missing. Where is it? Who did that, and what were they hiding?
Liz Saville Roberts
I agree. There is a history, as the right hon. Lady mentioned, of a loss of evidence associated with child abuse. I refer also to the Geoffrey Dickens dossier. I ask the Minister to consider whether victims and survivors of abuse in Wales—not only north Wales, of course—can, in all honesty, be satisfied with the findings of this report.
Now that the Macur review has been published, we are left with the overall lasting impression that documentation and process have been more important than securing justice for the victims and survivors of the abuse that was perpetrated, which should have been the overarching responsibility and purpose of the review. Symptomatic of that concern for documentation and process rather than for the victims and survivors of abuse was the failure to speak to them individually. The review held a public session in Wrexham in June 2013. The review’s website states that, on that day, Lady Justice Macur
“met privately with anyone who asked to do so”
and that the review
“met with numerous individuals with relevant information.”
However, I have spoken with one of the survivors, Keith Gregory, who is a point of contact for other victims and survivors of abuse, and he has informed me that arrangements for interviews were forgotten by the review.
Adding to the undermining of the victims and survivors of abuse are the definitions of “unreliable witnesses” and “multiple hearsay”. Those unfortunate terms were used at the time by people working within the Wales Office to dismiss those who had approached them to demand that attention be focused on investigating abuse that later turned out to be true and to be widespread. The terms are still in use today and are very potent.
It is unfortunate that, due to misguided and wild accusations that emanated from multiple investigations into prominent public figures, sympathy for the survivors and victims of historical child abuse has swung away from them to incorrectly accused individuals. Obviously, the cases of figures such as Lord Edwin Bramall and Harvey Proctor—this, of course, is relevant to news we have heard in recent days—have demonstrated the need to proceed with care and caution when investigations are carried out. However, the danger is that the popular and media perception focuses on sympathy for wronged figures at the expense of genuine victims and survivors. The sensationalist and prurient nature of the subject matter makes a good tabloid story, but surely society should make every effort to respect the suffering of all innocents caught up in both perpetration and accusation.
Ultimately, after reading the Macur review, I am left with the impression that many points still need to be explained and explored under the public gaze. I am particularly concerned about recommendation 5, which I do not interpret in the same way as the Secretary of State for Wales did in his statement last week. He referred to one alleged incident of criminal charges, but Lady Justice Macur’s recommendation seems far more wide-reaching. It concerns me that the Secretary of State appears to have been at pains to restrict the scope of recommendation 5, and I seek a further explanation of what steps will be taken.
The role of the Children’s Commissioner for Wales should be strengthened, which she mentioned in an interview on “Sunday Politics Wales” at the weekend. The commissioner, Sally Holland, called for greater powers, noting that the commissioner’s powers in relation to complaints, advocacy and whistleblowing should be extended to include any area that involves the abuse of children. Might I suggest the Government examine that point and perhaps, if appropriate, include it when they inevitably strengthen and revise the initial draft of the Wales Bill? Will the UK Government work with the Welsh Government to ensure that the Children’s Commissioner has the full range of powers she believes she needs to ensure the full and adequate protection of children?
The Children’s Commissioner also called for the Government to publish or explain information regarding who identified what number of redactions and in which chapter; that is an important point. We are aware that an unredacted copy of the review has been forwarded to the Goddard inquiry, but that will not report until the end of 2018 and will therefore be another long process for the survivors, who have waited for many years already. Victims and survivors need to know what the methodology and process for deciding upon redactions were; the Government owe them that. I note that the only politicians to have had sight of the unredacted version so far all belong to the Government. That does not seem right. It is also clear that there needs to be a strengthened status for evidence from child abuse inquiries, including its preservation, which is a wider point for any Government inquiry.
There undoubtedly needs to be a commitment to ensure that children’s voices are heard in the criminal justice system, in health and social care and in any other sector that involves the care of children and contains the potential for abuse. Rather than simply a platitude that seeks to soothe and reassure in the face of public anger and is then forgotten as time rolls on, we need to change the way in which children’s voices are heard during such processes, in concrete and administrative terms.
Mark Tami
The hon. Lady makes an important point about children’s voices being heard. In many of these cases, because the children were in a home, they were not considered to have any value, and that is why they were treated in the way they were. That, in some ways, is the worst aspect of this whole miserable, dreadful business.
Liz Saville Roberts
One thing that has saddened me is perceiving how vulnerable these children were, which made them vulnerable to abuse in the first place, and how that abuse in turn has affected them for the rest of their lives and in part condemns them to being unreliable witnesses. We have not served them well; there is no denying that.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on the speech she is making. In terms of process, is she surprised, as I am, at the paucity of reference to the linguistic context in which this happened in Wales—specifically in north Wales and north-west Wales, where a percentage of the children would be Welsh-speaking? I detect very few references to that in either the Macur report or, in fact, the Waterhouse report, which I read many years ago.
Liz Saville Roberts
Indeed. We are talking about children’s voices, and one aspect of that is whether people are able to use their first language, in which they are most confident and express their emotions most fluently.
Finally, one critical lesson to be learned—I again echo the Children’s Commissioner for Wales—is that reviews from now on must be centred on the victims and the survivors. They should have the opportunity to advise on both the remit and process of an inquiry and should be properly supported at all stages. They, of course, are the people who live with this experience for their whole lives, and it has been a terrible experience. Diolch yn fawr iawn.
Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
I am pleased to see you in the chair, Sir Edward. May I take this opportunity to congratulate the Minister on his appointment? This is not the easiest of debates with which to start. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) on her studied and sensible remarks.
This is a really difficult issue for Wrexham. It has cast a cloud over the years that I have been in Parliament, which are many now. The Waterhouse report was published in the year before I became a Member of Parliament and refers to events that occurred very often in Wrexham in the 1980s and 1990s, when I lived and worked in the area. There were great hopes for the Macur review. On Thursday, when the Secretary of State for Wales made a statement, I said that I was astonished. I am afraid that having considered the review to the extent I have been able to thus far, I do not in any way resile from my statement; in fact, I would intensify it.
The reaction within Wrexham has been one of huge disappointment and distress. The hon. Lady referred to Keith Gregory, who is my constituent and a local Plaid Cymru councillor in Wrexham, and to whom I spoke at the weekend. There is intense disappointment, but it simply confirms the view of many survivors about the political class, the political system and the whole world in which many of my constituents see politicians as operating. I am afraid that the report, with the redactions that have been referred to, will intensify the disillusion that the survivors of these incidents feel about the political and judicial system in north Wales.
A lot of issues will arise from the report, and I tell the Parliamentary Under-Secretary and Ministers at the Ministry of Justice that I will be pursuing many of those questions through parliamentary questions and further debate. We need a substantial debate—a full day’s debate—on this report, which is of national importance, in order to address the issues in it, once we have had the opportunity to try to read it. I congratulate the hon. Lady on reading the report: I have had real difficulty doing so because of the number of redactions in it. Many of the most important and controversial aspects of the report are very difficult to extract from the document we have.
The issue of redaction is very important. I was surprised last Thursday that the then Secretary of State for Wales made the statement, because I had expected the Lord Chancellor to make it. I have raised questions in connection with the publication of this report that have always been answered by the Ministry of Justice, which I therefore expected to be dealing with the matter. Although the report was jointly commissioned by the Wales Office and the Ministry of Justice, it is very important that Justice Ministers—I mean no disrespect to the Wales Office—should answer, because there are very technical and difficult legal questions relating to it.
It is clear that this report followed correspondence that took place between the Lord Chancellor and Lady Macur who was conducting an investigation and doing an independent report. The important issue of redaction was at the heart of that correspondence. The review itself makes it clear in paragraph 8.4 that
“the redaction of this report is a matter for the commissioning departments.”
It is very important that everyone out there understands that the redactions in the report were made by the Government, not by the judge. The only people who have seen the full report and have made the redactions are the Government.
However, that was not enough for the Lord Chancellor. Information that is given to us by Lady Justice Macur in paragraph 1.44 of the report tells us that Her Majesty’s Procurator General and Treasury Solicitor, Jonathan Jones, asked for a meeting with her to discuss the
“inclusion of names of individuals subject to unsubstantiated allegations.”
In the review, Lady Justice Macur says that she refused to have such a meeting.
That was not the end of the matter as far as the Ministry of Justice was concerned. I should make it clear that I have written to the Lord Chancellor to give him notice that I will be referring to this report and to him as an individual in this debate, because after the refusal to meet the Treasury Solicitor, the Lord Chancellor—effectively Lady Macur’s boss—wrote a letter to her. She is the head of an independent judicial inquiry investigating an alleged cover-up. He asked her to withhold the names of individuals who were the subject of allegations from the draft review presented to other Government Departments—so the Lord Chancellor asked her to take the names out of the draft report that was being sent, within the Government, to other Departments. I do not regard that as appropriate. This was an independent judicial inquiry and the matter was one for the judge.
I would have liked to question the Lord Chancellor on those points but, unfortunately, he did not present the report to Parliament, so I have not had the opportunity to do so: I will pursue those matters. In any event, the Government have redacted, as we have heard, huge swathes of the Macur review, removing in particular the names of individuals who have been the subject of speculation and who have national recognition. For example, the name Peter Morrison has been redacted from the report, but puzzlingly, other names—Greville Janner, Lord Gareth Williams—have not.
Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)
If I may correct the hon. Gentleman, Peter Morrison’s name does appear in the body of the report. It is important that the hon. Gentleman clarifies that, because it is not redacted.
Ian C. Lucas
It appears in one part of the report, but it is also redacted in other parts of it. His name appears in the introduction, I believe, but in the part that relates to establishment figures, his name is redacted.
Mr David Jones
The point I was seeking to make is that his name is not wholly redacted, and since the hon. Gentleman is making a speech that covers very important matters, it is necessary to clarify that point.
Ian C. Lucas
I am grateful for that clarification, but in the chapter that relates to establishment figures, the two names that I referred to are not redacted, whereas Peter Morrison’s name is. It is very difficult to deduce a line of principle to see why someone made that decision. I think we need to have that information, and I think it is very important and very appropriate that the Children’s Commissioner for Wales has written to the Secretary of State for Wales, saying that
“more can be done to communicate many of the omissions to be found in the report, and seek a greater level of transparency to be afforded to victims. As such, I call on the UK Government to issue a statement explaining the methodology used for redacting the publically available Macur Review Report, giving a full rationale for the changes made. Without an understanding of the approach employed by the Government’s lawyers, many will continue to question whether there has been protection of individuals because of their position in society, rather than because there are ongoing criminal investigations, or if there is no evidence against them.”
Some of the people whose names have been redacted are dead, so there will not be any continuing criminal investigations as far as they are concerned, and it is very difficult to understand why these redactions have been made and what element of principle is involved. We need that information because we have to try to persuade our constituents that our political system is not rotten and that it does afford them some element of protection.
I am also very concerned about the circumstances in which the review was set up. There is a very interesting section starting in paragraph 1.33 of the review concerning a Wales Office note, and the involvement of the Cabinet Secretary in the compilation of a note that involved the former Secretary of State for Wales, the right hon. Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones), who is here today. It seems from the report that issues that are directly relevant to the establishment of the Macur review have been left hanging in the air and that a Cabinet note, which is referred to in paragraph 1.40, has not been disclosed. That is one of many documents that are available and should be published. A huge number of questions arise from the report and I am afraid its contents do nothing to resolve the disillusion of my constituents or the many survivors who suffered at the hands of criminals in north Wales in the 1980s and 1990s.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a valuable contribution to the debate. Does he think that handing an unredacted copy to the Goddard inquiry will affect the delay in anyone having any chance of finding out what the redactions are? The Goddard inquiry is very optimistically expected to report in two years, but the scale of the inquiry is so enormous that most people think it will take a decade. Is it right that the abuse of those young people should continue for at least another 10 years?
Ian C. Lucas
My hon. Friend makes a valid point. The report took over three years and I would be astonished—to use that phrase again—if the Goddard review reported within that timeframe. That is why it is incumbent on us to ask these questions. It is unacceptable that only members of the Government see the unredacted report. I am a former Minister and an elected Member of Parliament and it is appropriate for the unredacted report to be seen by individuals in Opposition parties. Otherwise, the inference that political motives are involved will continue to be made.
Mr David Jones
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that another disturbing element of the report is the handling of the documentation of the inquiry: its transmission from the Welsh Office to the Welsh Assembly Government, and what happened when it was in the hands of the Welsh Assembly Government? Does he agree that those matters also need further clarification?
Ian C. Lucas
The disappearance of documents at so many stages during the history of this matter creates huge difficulty for anyone expecting a proper inquiry. All those matters need to be questioned and investigated further.
The difficult with the Macur review, which in many ways gives valuable information that we did not have before, is that it leaves many questions hanging in the air, and all questions need to be addressed. The content is so dense and difficult that it will take time and hard work to get through to its core. There are many disturbing questions, and more now than before the then Secretary of State for Wales made his statement on Thursday.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) on securing today’s important debate. I hope that hon. Members will forgive me if I do not refer to all their speeches in detail, but I have a number of questions for the Minister, whom I welcome to his new role. We are all anxious that he can speak for as long as possible on this important subject.
I commend the thoughtful speech of my parliamentary neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian C. Lucas), in whose constituency many of the care homes referred to are situated. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), my hon. Friends the Members for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami), for Newport West (Paul Flynn) and for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) and the right hon. Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones) all took part in the debate.
I will come to the redactions, which are a cause of great concern, but when they are connected with legal proceedings, court proceedings and the like, I hope that new prosecutions will be secured. I also hope that if sentences are passed, the judiciary are not unduly lenient. These were most heinous of crimes, not only because they involved the sexual and emotional abuse of children, great evils though those are, but because they involved a group of children who the criminals who perpetuated these acts knew would never be believed. They were criminal and evil on both counts, and I hope the judiciary do not get soft when sentencing.
The abuse that was carried out in care homes in north Wales shames us all. As the Waterhouse inquiry found, it was widespread and persistent physical and sexual violence against young boys and girls. That it was perpetuated by those who should have been looking after those children, in homes where they should have felt safe, just adds to the sheer horror of what occurred. Those of us who lived in the areas around those homes well remember that it was common parlance to talk about the “naughty boys’ homes”. That was how they were regarded at the time.
Our thoughts must be with the survivors of that abuse, who were let down for a second time when they reached out for help and none was given. It was because of concerns raised by survivors about the scope of the Waterhouse inquiry that the Macur review was commissioned. Lady Justice Macur’s foreword to her review says that she hopes
“to achieve the finality that many participants in this process will desire.”
Indeed, that was what we all hoped for.
Since the review was published last week, however, a number of survivors have expressed their disappointment with its conclusions, and that has been echoed by many Members today. The NSPCC has expressed concern that the “lengthy, drawn out process” of the review
“risks deterring victims from coming forward.”
I sincerely hope that is not the case, and that survivors will have their voices heard clearly by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse led by Justice Lowell Goddard.
Last week, the then Secretary of State for Wales said that the Goddard inquiry would open an office in Cardiff to engage with survivors in Wales. Can the Minister provide further information about when that will occur, and crucially, will he outline how the Goddard inquiry will engage with survivors and participants in other parts of Wales, including north Wales?
We know that physical and sexual abuse leaves a lasting impact on the lives of those affected and that, no matter how long ago that abuse occurred, survivors need support to rebuild their lives. The publicity surrounding the review will have triggered deeply painful memories for many survivors and may encourage others to seek help for the first time. Will the Minister set out exactly what support is available to those who come forward? Has he or his predecessor had conversations with agencies, including the Children’s Commissioner for Wales, to ensure that help is highlighted to those who need it?
The Children’s Commissioner for Wales has highlighted the need for clarity on why the redactions were made. Redacting information is a highly sensitive area, because it seems to conflict with the transparency that inquiries such as the Macur review should provide. It is vital to get the balance right. We know that it is necessary to redact some information, when criminal investigations are involved, but our view is that it should be done in as few cases as possible and must be justified to survivors. How many redactions were made in addition to those requested by Lady Justice Macur? What methodology was used when deciding which names were redacted?
I want to ask the Minister specifically about the process that led to the redactions, which is described in paragraphs 1.44 and 1.45 of the report and has been raised previously in the debate. Lady Justice Macur writes that she received unsolicited letters, first from the head of the Government Legal Service and then from the Secretary of State for Justice, about the extent to which her report would name those subject to unsubstantiated allegations. The Justice Secretary “strongly urged” Lady Justice Macur not to name those concerned and suggested that she
“underestimated the unfairness and prejudice to such individuals of including their names in the Report”.
To be clear, those names have been redacted in the published version of the report, but the Justice Secretary was arguing that they should not have been included in the first place. Lady Justice Macur decided not to follow that course of action. It is unfortunate that the Justice Secretary made that approach, given the understandable sensitivity that surrounds the question of redactions. Is the Minister satisfied that the Justice Secretary was right to make that approach, particularly in light of the fact that his was one of the commissioning Departments, and does he support Lady Justice Macur’s approach to those subject to unsubstantiated allegations?
My hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham referred to the need for a longer debate on this issue. Can the Minister confirm that that might be granted in Government time?
The abuse described in the Waterhouse inquiry and again in the Macur review is truly staggering. I hope that the review is the start of a process whereby survivors will feel that their voices are being heard. As we move forward, it is imperative that anyone who has committed these gravest of crimes against the most vulnerable, no matter how long ago, is promptly brought to justice. The survivors of this abuse, and the people of Wales, have waited long enough.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Guto Bebb)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank hon. Members for their warm welcome for my appointment to this position; it is appreciated. The hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian C. Lucas) made the point that this is not the baptism that one would have expected or anticipated, and this has been a difficult week of trying to get to grips with a very difficult subject area, but the way in which the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) has approached the debate and the way in which other hon. Members have contributed are to be applauded and are certainly appreciated from my point of view.
As a north Walian MP, I am acutely aware of the dark shadow that this issue has thrown over north Wales, and the rest of Wales for that matter, for far too long. Therefore, it is appropriate to congratulate the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd on securing the debate and on how it has been conducted. All the contributions made by MPs from north Wales have shown the seriousness with which we want to approach the issue and the importance of ensuring that lessons are learned in order to ensure that we can give some clarity and confidence to the people in north Wales, in accordance with the comments made by the hon. Member for Wrexham.
Guto Bebb
I accept that point. I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) for her work on these issues, and while I am paying tributes, I would like to say that the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd is clearly following in her predecessor’s footsteps in highlighting concerns on this issue.
It is important that I try to respond to the questions that have been asked. It would be easy for me to comment on how the Waterhouse inquiry was established and the concerns about the Waterhouse inquiry. We could talk about how the Macur review was established and the concerns there. However, the key point is that I have limited time to deal with the questions that have been raised, so I will try to respond to all of them, and if I fail, I will certainly ensure that I write to hon. Members on those specific issues.
It is important to make this clarification at the outset. The hon. Member for Wrexham highlighted a degree of concern that the previous Secretary of State for Wales made the statement on Thursday and subsequently this debate is being responded to by the Wales Office. It is important to point out that the Macur review was jointly commissioned. In view of the fact that the original Waterhouse report was commissioned by the Wales Office and in view of the fact that this report was a joint commission, I think it is appropriate that the Wales Office responds, but clearly questions can be asked of both Departments. The Departments will consult each other in responding to any further questions from the hon. Gentleman; and clearly, if there are any omissions in the speech that I make today, further questions can be asked. The Departments will work together to try to give answers that will satisfy hon. Members in relation to the concerns that they have raised.
Clearly, the key concern highlighted by hon. Members across the Chamber this afternoon relates to redactions. Those concerns have been expressed not only by hon. Members, but by civil society in Wales and of course by the Children’s Commissioner for Wales. I am very pleased to be able to report that I have spoken this morning to the Children’s Commissioner for Wales. It is clearly appropriate that we take her concerns seriously. I will write, on behalf of the Department, to the Children’s Commissioner to respond to some of the concerns that she has expressed, and will highlight the reasons and the methodology, which have been provided in the public domain, in relation to why some of the redactions were undertaken. The Children’s Commissioner is more than welcome to put that letter in the public domain in due course. There is no intention whatever to hide from any of the questions in relation to redactions.
In responding fully on the issue of redactions, I think it is fair to say that this concern was raised before publication of the report, by the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley, and the statement was very clear that the redactions would be as minimal as possible. That is why, when we published the report, we also published the two letters: the letter from the Cabinet Office and the letter from the Government’s legal department explaining why there was a need to do some redactions in the report. It is fair to say that in the report Lady Justice Macur herself states that there are certain details that should be considered for redaction; and again, the important thing here is for me to try to explain on what basis those decisions were taken.
Clearly, the first reason for redactions, which is crucial and understood, I suspect, by all Members of the House, is that we would not want to do anything that would potentially compromise any ongoing police investigations and any criminal proceedings. It is clear that a tribute was paid in the main Chamber on Thursday to the work of the National Crime Agency through Operation Pallial. It would be a travesty of justice if the publication of names in the Macur report without being redacted properly were to threaten in any way, shape or form the possibility of further criminal investigations and further charges being levied. The danger is of undermining any further criminal proceedings, which would be a further betrayal of the needs of the victims in north Wales, who want to see justice done at the end of the day. In terms of redactions, it is clear that we have an obligation to ensure that nothing printed and published in this report could in any way, shape or form damage the possibility of any further criminal proceedings or of further legal action being taken as a result of criminal investigations that are now forthcoming.
I come now to the second category. Clearly, a significant number of names of victims of abuse have been redacted. That, again, is a legal requirement. We are required under the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 to ensure that the identities of those who have suffered sexual abuse are protected; they have a right to anonymity. Therefore, those redactions have been done in order to protect people who have already suffered. It would be wrong to have people’s names dragged through the public sphere once more. Those people have already suffered so much as a result of the abuse that they suffered.
The redactions in those two categories have been overseen by Sue Gray, the director general of propriety and ethics in the Cabinet Office. The letter from Sue Gray was published at the same time as this report, so again, the reasoning behind the redactions was certainly communicated and will be communicated again to the Children’s Commissioner, as I stated.
The third category, which I suspect is the one causing most concern to hon. Members in view of the speeches that have been made, is those individuals who have been accused of abuse or speculated to be involved in abuse, who have not been subject to a police investigation, who have not been convicted of a criminal offence and whose name is not in the public domain in the context of child abuse. It is important to state that in the report Lady Justice Macur advises that the publication of those names would be
“unfair in two respects and unwise in a third.”
That is not the Government—not the Wales Office—it is Lady Justice Macur herself. She states:
“First, the nature of the information against them sometimes derives from multiple hearsay”.
I understand the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd in relation to the use of hearsay, but again, that was not a recommendation coming from Government; it was from Lady Justice Macur herself. She also states that
“second, these individuals will have no proper opportunity to address the unattributed and, sometimes, unspecified allegations of disreputable conduct made against them”.
Again, that is a statement made by Lady Justice Macur. She continued,
“and third, police investigations may be compromised”.
Now, I have already touched on the issue of criminal investigations. We do have an obligation to highlight where we believe there is wrongdoing but we also have an obligation to ensure that we are not pointing the finger at individuals who might be completely and utterly innocent. We all know that there is a danger that publishing names without any specific allegations being made and without any specific justification could create a witch hunt, which is the last thing that a responsible Government or Parliament should be involved with.
It is important to highlight that the redactions were not undertaken to protect any individuals or to damage the report. They were undertaken to ensure the integrity of the report. I understand the concerns because, as a Member from north Wales, I read the report on Thursday in no way anticipating that I would be responding to the debate today. However, I think that the arguments presented by the Treasury Solicitor and by the Cabinet Office are not without merit. Indeed, I challenge hon. Members to state whether they believe that those arguments are incorrect.
Ian C. Lucas
I accept many of the arguments that the Minister makes, but why were the two names I mentioned earlier unredacted while many other names were redacted?
Guto Bebb
I will try to respond to that in my next few comments. Just to finish the comments I was making, I understand the frustration and the feeling that there could have been fewer redactions, but it is imperative that the reasoning, in the round, is understood by hon. Members. I have tried to explain why those redactions have been made. I have explained very clearly that they were undertaken as a result of advice given, which I think was quite reasonable. I hope that hon. Members will take that into account. There has been no attempt to mislead or to not be very clear as to the basis for the changes. We are more than happy to correspond on the issue if the hon. Member for Wrexham feels the need to take it any further.
Albert Owen
On the issue of redaction, does the Minister understand the concerns of many people that only Government Departments saw the unredacted version? He may be coming to that. I think it is hugely important.
Guto Bebb
Yes, I will touch on that issue, which was also raised by the hon. Member for Wrexham. It is simply not correct that only Government Ministers have seen the uncorrected report. It might be correct that the only politicians who have seen the report are Government politicians but it is not only the Government who have seen it. Clearly, an unredacted copy has been sent to the Goddard review, Operation Pallial, Operation Orion and Operation Hydrant.
It is simply not correct to say that the only people who have seen an unredacted version of the report are Government Ministers. If the argument is that we should provide that information to all elected politicians but not to the general public, it is a completely different argument. Given the way in which politicians are viewed, I am not sure that would contribute any further to the trust that the hon. Member for Wrexham seeks.
On the methodology, I have tried to explain why the redactions were undertaken. The two letters that we received have been published. I will write to the Children’s Commissioner for Wales highlighting again the reasons for the redactions. I am not claiming that the response will satisfy all people’s concerns, but it is clear that the Wales Office and the Government ensured that the advice that was provided was published at the same time as the report. We have provided the explanation for the methodology and we will provide further explanations.
I understand that the hon. Members for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) and for Dwyfor Meirionnydd highlighted concerns but I think that those have been addressed. If they need to be addressed in further detail, I hope that our letter to the Children’s Commissioner for Wales will provide that. I am more than happy to respond to any questions received.
Paul Flynn
Does the Minister know that there is a precedent for revealing to Members of Parliament reports that are entirely secret? The report that I saw as a member of the Select Committee on Home Affairs—the Operation Tiberius report—was an extraordinary document that named many people including criminals and police, who worked together through the freemasonry movement. We inspected that report under strict terms of security. We were not allowed to take our phones in. We were watched the whole time and we were not allowed to take any notes. There is a precedent for allowing Members of Parliament to see the unredacted report.
Guto Bebb
I take the hon. Gentleman’s point but hon. Members have made arguments that the redactions are damaging public confidence. I am unsure how the idea he offers would contribute to solving the issue of public confidence because a very limited amount of people in the political sphere would be responding. A couple of other questions were asked by the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd—
Guto Bebb
Could I just answer this question because I am aware of the time? Another question was asked by the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd about recommendation five. The issue relates to the consideration of criminal charges relating to events referred to in paragraphs 645 to 675 of the report. It does not relate to the actions of the Wales Office or of any Government Department. The police and Crown Prosecution Service are aware of the specifics of the matter, and that issue is a matter for them to consider, not the Government.
The hon. Members for Clwyd South and for Dwyfor Meirionnydd asked how many redactions, in addition to those that were a result of the advice given, were made by the Government. The answer is zero. Not a single further redaction was made. The redactions that have been made were all in accordance with the advice given and the explanation that has been provided.
The hon. Member for Wrexham asked about the publication of some names and not others. Again, the letter from the Treasury Solicitor sets out the methodology for redacting such names, saying very clearly that they are the names of people who are rumoured or speculated to be involved in abuse, who have not been convicted of a criminal offence and/or whose name is not in the public domain in the context of child abuse. That is in the letter from the Treasury Solicitor so the reasoning has been provided.
Ian C. Lucas
I do not accept for one moment that those principles apply to the name Peter Morrison. I do not think that any reasonable person could reach that conclusion. That name is in the public domain and it is in the report. I cannot understand why that name has been redacted. The redaction of that one name has had a massive impact on the public confidence in the whole report.
Guto Bebb
I hear what the hon. Gentleman is saying but I have attempted to provide an explanation as to why the redactions have been as they have been.
I need to touch on a few other issues. I do not think there is any denial of the inadequate nature of the records management, which is a point that was raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones). It is acknowledged that the records management has been poor. It was not to anybody’s satisfaction and it is fair to say that lessons have been learned by the Wales Office, and I presume that the Welsh Assembly will take some of the report’s advice on records retention very seriously. However, it is fair to state that Lady Justice Macur is clear that she received
“the majority of, if not all, relevant documentation”
and that she is
“confident in the conclusions I reach in this Report in light of numerous, varied and cumulative sources of information available”.
Again, that is not the Government’s line. That is a comment from Lady Macur regarding the lack of record-keeping or the problematic element of the record-keeping.
An important point is contained in paragraph 2.6 of the report, in which Lady Macur states quite clearly that 523 boxes of files were received, some 400 of which originated from the Wales Office. Although that is unsatisfactory compared with what we would expect from a Government Department, I stress the fact that Lady Macur does not believe that her conclusions would have been different if she had received more information than that which was provided.
We have touched on establishment names only very quickly. I have tried to explain why redactions have happened, and we are more than happy to respond to any further questions from hon. Members who believe that there is an issue there.
The other point that I would like to touch upon just before I finish is that Lady Justice Macur adds, for the sake of clarity,
“At no time have Ministers or their officials attempted to influence me in the conduct of the review or the conclusions I have drawn.”
There is a view here that there is a lack of transparency and clarity but, on every aspect, we have tried to offer an explanation and even Lady Justice Macur has said that she was not subject to any undue pressure.
I do not think I will have time to respond to the question from the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) about the Welsh language or to the question from the hon. Member for Clwyd South about the Goddard inquiry, but I will write to both Members.
The debate has been difficult and there are lessons to be learned. We will write to the Children’s Commissioner for Wales and respond to any further questions. The Macur report was certainly worth doing and it has been of value.
Written Statements
(8 years, 9 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Type 26 Global Combat Ship Demonstration Phase
(8 years, 9 months ago)
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The Minister for Defence Procurement (Mr Philip Dunne)
Today I am providing an update on our plans for the next stage of the Type 26 Global Combat Ship (T26 GCS) programme.
The 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR15) set out the Government’s clear commitment to build eight Anti-Submarine Type 26 Global Combat Ships, preceded by two additional offshore patrol vessels (OPVs), and to launch a concept study and then design and build a new class of lighter, flexible general purpose frigates.
Alongside work on the national shipbuilding strategy, we are working with industry to develop an optimised schedule for the Type 26 and OPV programmes. As part of this, we have agreed a contract with BAE Systems valued at £472 million to extend the T26 demonstration phase to June 2017.
This will enable us to mature further the detailed ship design, ahead of the start of manufacture, including investing in shore testing facilities, and extend our investment in the wider supply chain in parallel with the re-baselining work which is continuing.
The investment in shore-based testing facilities will test key parts of the ships’ power and propulsion system and the combat system to de-risk their future integration into the class.
Investment in the wider supply chain will cover further key equipment purchases for the first three Type 26 Global Combat Ships including the diesel generators, sonar domes, helicopter handling equipment, mission bay side doors and the stabiliser and steering gear systems, and demonstrates our ongoing commitment to invest in the UK’s ability to design, develop and deliver complex warships to meet the Royal Navy’s future capability needs.
[HCWS639]
Inverness and Highland City Region Deal
(8 years, 9 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)
In March 2015, the Government announced their intention to negotiate an Inverness and Highland city region deal. As well as deals across England, this followed the successful agreement of a city deal in Glasgow and Clyde Valley. An Aberdeen city deal was announced on 28 January 2016.
I can today inform the House that the Government have reached agreement with the Scottish Government, the Highland Council and other partners on a heads of terms city region deal for Inverness.
This heads of terms city region deal agreement provides a transformative opportunity to position the area as a region of digital opportunity and strength, thereby enabling the highlands to be the best digitally connected rural region in Europe.
Central to this will be a significant funding package which invests up to £315 million of public money into the regional economy. As part of this funding package, the UK Government will commit up to £53.1 million, the Highland Council along with regional partners will commit up to £127 million and the Scottish Government will commit up to £135 million. This funding package will be provided over a 10-year period subject to detailed business cases, statutory processes and implementation plans.
The UK Government’s contribution to the fund will support a set of proposals from the region intended to enable the highland area to be the most digitally connected rural region in Europe by investing into extended digital coverage, including superfast broadband and mobile 4G connectivity.
It will also support a package of new innovation measures that builds on existing academic and industry expertise in Inverness, as well as business support networks across the highlands. This will include exploring ways to support a multi-disciplinary centre focused on the commercialisation of new medical products and technologies, and a northern Scotland innovation hub.
[HCWS638]
HS2 Phase One: Financial Indemnity for Affinity Water
(8 years, 9 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)
I have today laid before Parliament a departmental minute from the Department for Transport describing the contingent liability arising from an indemnity that will be provided to Affinity Water Ltd, protecting them from financial loss as a result of any construction damage to at-risk water resources from the construction of the Phase One, London to West Midlands HS2 rail line.
HS2 construction in the Colne Valley has the potential to cause damage to the chalk aquifer from which Affinity Water sources its water supply. An appropriate mitigation strategy will be developed during detailed design of the construction works, using information from ground investigation surveys. With the mitigation strategy in place, it is considered that the risks to the aquifer will be low. However, the risk of potential damage will exist despite the mitigation measures which will be applied. Should the aquifer or the company’s abstraction points be damaged, Affinity Water is likely to face a consequential financial loss. There is no existing protection for Affinity Water in respect of this loss and they would be unlikely to make a successful claim under common law. Under standard compensation arrangements, the basis for compensation would link to the loss in value or damage to a claimant’s property, which for Affinity Water could include pipes or pumps. However, the water in an aquifer is not a property of Affinity Water and so they have no protection if the project causes damage to the resources on which they are dependent. Therefore, Affinity Water require the Department for Transport to carry the liability for any financial loss arising from any impact of the Phase One construction works on their abstraction points.
The worst-case scenario with respect to the liability would include the cost of replacing three abstraction boreholes, each one is estimated to cost £20 million, and also the cost of providing temporary replacement water supplies during the period for which water abstraction is interrupted. The indemnity will not be limited, however. Under the worst-case scenario, the projected cost of the indemnity is expected to be approximately £77 million. The duration of the liability is scheduled to last for four years from 2017 to 2021, which represents the period of the construction works which might cause the potential damage. The worst-case scenario, in which HS2 must replace more than one borehole, is considered to be remote.
If the liability is called, provision for any payment will be managed through normal supply procedure. The Department will be noting this contingent liability in its accounts.
Attachments can be viewed online at:
http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2016-03-22/HCWS637/.
[HCWS637]
Office for Nuclear Regulation
(8 years, 9 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People (Justin Tomlinson)
Later today I will lay a copy of the Unnumbered Act Paper, the Office for Nuclear Regulation’s strategic plan for 2016-20 before this House. The strategic plan will also be published on the ONR’s website.
I can confirm, in accordance with schedule 7, section 25(3) to the Energy Act 2013, that there have been no exclusions to the published document on the grounds of national security.
[HCWS636]
Grand Committee
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Stedman-Scott) (Con)
Good afternoon. If there is a Division in the House, the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes.
Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 (Consequential Amendments) (Bankruptcy) and the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2016
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
That the Grand Committee do consider the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 (Consequential Amendments) (Bankruptcy) and the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2016.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)
My Lords, these regulations make necessary changes to primary and secondary legislation as a result of introducing a new process for how a person applies for bankruptcy and changes made to the requirements for reporting on the conduct of directors of insolvent companies.
Currently, when an individual wishes to take the option of making themselves bankrupt, they must complete a paper petition and present it to their local court. From 6 April this year, if we are content with the regulations today, instead of going to court, individuals will be able to apply online via the central government website GOV.UK. We recognise that applying for bankruptcy is a big step and one which should be contemplated only when no other options are appropriate, but the new digital process offers significant advantages. It will be easier and cheaper to access than the current court-based system, and will remove the stigma that some individuals associate with going to court.
Applications for bankruptcy by individuals in financial difficulty will be determined by the Adjudicator—a new post within the Insolvency Service. Once the order has been made, the case will transfer to the Official Receiver in the same way as it does now for administration and, if appropriate, investigation. The process for creditors wishing to make individuals bankrupt will not change, as the courts have an important role where there may be disagreement between parties about amounts owed.
Some people have expressed concern that the new system does not provide for remission of the application fee, which the courts were able to do, or an alternative to online application. Administration costs around fee remissions are disproportionate and any reduction in fees for some applicants would result in higher fees for others. The new system does provide that the application fee—£130, which is a reduction on the old fee of £180 —can be paid in instalments, which will help those on low incomes. People who do not have access to a computer are able to use those in local libraries or can get help from a friend or relative, or a debt advice organisation such as Citizens Advice.
Taking the courts out of the bankruptcy process will deliver cost savings in the form of reduced staff, administration and court time. The impact assessment for these measures was published in 2012 and estimated that the savings would be between £8.1 million and £16.6 million a year, depending on the number of debtor petitions. In fact, the number of people petitioning for their own bankruptcy has steadily declined since 2012, and, based on the figures for 2015, it is now likely that savings will be in the region of £6.3 million rather than the £8.1 million that I mentioned. The benefit to business is not material; the main savings we are seeing are in administration and court costs.
The second matter dealt with in these regulations is the issue of reporting on a director’s conduct. When a company goes into insolvency, the officeholder appointed as liquidator or administrator is required to report to the Secretary of State on the conduct of its directors. Reports that indicate misconduct on the part of a director are investigated by the Insolvency Service and may lead to disqualification proceedings. Currently, officeholders must submit their report within six months of the insolvency. From 6 April that period will be shortened to three months as part of a package of measures in the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 that strengthen the director disqualification regime.
In addition, we are introducing a new process for how officeholders complete and submit their report. In common with the new bankruptcy process, we are replacing the current paper-based forms with a digital system that allows officeholders to complete and submit their report electronically and upload new information as soon as it comes to their attention. If for any reason the online system becomes unable to receive information for more than a week, the Insolvency Service will be required to provide an alternative means for officeholders to submit their reports.
In both cases, therefore, we are adjusting to the digital age.
Removing forms and moving to an online reporting system means that the changes being introduced are deregulatory measures, delivering a net benefit to insolvency practitioners of £3.4 million a year—savings to business that should result in more money being available to creditors. The regulations we are considering today ensure that the relevant references across the statute book are amended in consequence of the changes being introduced. I commend these draft regulations to the Committee.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her extensive introduction to what is quite a narrow SI. It has a good history. I recall the debates that led up to the changes and also the paperwork that was provided at that time. I think that I recall correctly that this measure was welcomed by the industry when it was proposed. The consultation revealed that those involved were pleased by the direction in which the policy was going. The only significant issue was the pressure to go electronic, which came late in the process and was requested by the industry itself. I understand from my consultations with people from the industry that they are very pleased that the regulations have come out the way they have.
This is a good-news story—possibly so good that there is very little that I want to say about it, except simply to say that it was a game of considerable pleasure to read the very small amendments to the wording that had to be looked at if one was to do justice to the scrutiny that we are supposed to have in this House. Small words were changed that made a difference to the process: an individual has to be “adjudged” bankrupt as opposed to being “made” bankrupt. It was an exercise of great skill that I enjoyed processing.
However—there is always a “however”, is there not?—I of course noticed the change that led to the amendment to the draft statutory instrument that was inserted into the copy that I have. I slightly extend the point; I did not notice it, but I was very pleased to receive it. However, I cannot make sense of it, so could the Minister make clear to me what I am supposed to read into page 5, Schedule 1, paragraph 14(1), line 2? I could read that the first change, which is in the original, is in the earlier corrections and is obviously correct, because it should read:
“Paragraph 9 … to Schedule 6 (freezing orders in respect of property liable to forfeiture)”.
I am not sure about the change of “of” to “to” in the second line, because it seems to me that that paragraph needs to relate to a primary piece of legislation, which presumably is the International Criminal Court Act. If there is not time to be briefed in the short period of time that I am giving the Minister, I would be very happy to receive a Keeling schedule that clearly indicates what we are supposed to read into that.
That is really all that I had to say. I notice that there is no impact statement because of the assertion that there no impact at all on business from this. It says, in fact, that there is no impact on business, charities or voluntary bodies. I find that slightly difficult to believe because, presumably, the impact of insolvency always has a third-party engagement. But I understand the spirit in which this was made—which is, as the Minister said, that this is relatively small in the great scheme of things. It does not come to much, and, as insolvencies reduce, it will get even less. With that, I am happy to support this.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for agreeing that this is a good news story. It is always nice to put through this House legislation that helps to move things forward. As he says, we have changed the reference to paragraph 9 “to” the Schedule to the Act to “of” the Schedule to the Act. I understand that this reflects the conventions of writing these kinds of SIs. I am reading a book about Cicero at the moment and I am afraid that this point seems rather arcane, but that is the correct convention, which is why we have made the change.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
If Cicero had been involved, I think that the noble Baroness’s speech would have been about 17 times longer. He was not short on words. Quite honestly, I do not look for a response today. If in one of her excellent letters the Minister could write out what it is expected to mean, I would be very happy to receive that.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
I would be delighted to do that. These arcane points of parliamentary drafting are an improvement. Actually, I would like to defend Cicero: he was a great orator. I agree that he tended to speak at length, but some of the phrases that he coined are probably still influencing our language and our oratory, even in this House today. The Committee seems happy and I commend the draft regulations.
Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses (Amendment) Regulations 2016
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
That the Grand Committee do consider the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses (Amendment) Regulations 2016.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)
My Lords, our manifesto promised to help businesses to create 2 million new jobs over this Parliament. To meet this, we need a strong and efficient labour market that gives people opportunities to find jobs that are right for them and allows employers to access the right type of labour that matches the skills that they need. We need to make sure that it is fair and that workers in Great Britain have the same access to job opportunities as those elsewhere. The recruitment sector plays an important role in the labour market by matching demand for jobs to demand for workers. According to the Office for National Statistics in 2014, there were around 19,400 employment agencies and employment businesses within the recruitment sector.
The sector is regulated by the Employment Agencies Act 1973 and the Conduct Regulations. Last year the Government consulted on a package of measures—building on the previous consultation during the coalition Government—to remove a number of the business-to-business regulations, and at the same time to strengthen the existing legislation that prevents employment agencies and businesses from advertising jobs in other EEA countries without advertising them in Great Britain and in English.
It is important that we reduce the regulatory burden on employment businesses and employment agencies as far as possible, while increasing the opportunities for workers in Britain to apply for jobs that are based in Britain. However, we also need to balance the need to reduce the burden on business with maintaining all the fundamental protections for agency workers that these regulations ensure. None of these regulatory changes undermines worker protections. We are not changing any regulations that entitle them to be paid for all the hours they work, and they will still be protected from being charged fees for work-finding services.
Regulation 9 of the Conduct Regulations currently prevents employment agencies and employment businesses from claiming to be acting on one basis to the work seeker while stating something different to the hirer. We are removing this provision as there is little evidence that it serves a useful purpose. We do not need free-standing regulation to underpin a standard that would be enforceable to some extent through contract law—or, in cases of fraud, through the general criminal law.
Regulation 11 ensures that agencies and businesses cannot enter into a contract with a hirer on behalf of a worker, and vice versa. It currently applies to all employment agencies and employment businesses but is relevant mainly to those operating in the entertainment and modelling sector. We are removing this regulation as we consider that there are sufficient protections elsewhere in the provisions specifically relating to those sectors.
Regulation 17 currently requires employment businesses to obtain agreement to terms with hirers. While it is important for employment businesses to agree terms with hirers, we believe that this already happens in practice and it is not for the Government to prescribe the terms of any business contract. Failure to do so should not be subject to a criminal penalty, as is the case currently. We therefore propose to remove this regulation.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, I am, again, very grateful to the Minister for introducing this statutory instrument and for giving us such a full context in which it is operating. I have slightly more trouble with this one than I had with the last one, in three regards. The first is just to check that I am not missing something. The problem said to be under consideration appears in the helpful Explanatory Memorandum which is attached to the impact assessment. It states:
“The United Kingdom has one of the most lightly-regulated labour markets in the developed world for permanent employees. It is also the third least regulated labour market after Canada and the US in terms of temporary contracts”.
That seems to be quite a good situation, but we read further down:
“The Employment Agencies Act 1973 sought to ensure that there was a consistent approach across Great Britain”.
It gives the reasons for that—there were, I think, a number of scandals at the time and it is good that the Government of the day decided to legislate in this way. It goes on:
“Since then there have been many amendments to the legislation, which has resulted in a very complex set of regulations which place a burden on business, and are not fit for purpose in the UK’s modern labour market”.
The Government cannot have it both ways: it is either one of the most lightly-regulated labour markets in the developed world or it is a very complex set of regulations which place a burden on business and are not fit for purpose. I am not accusing the Minister in any sense of bad faith—I am sure she spoke absolutely from the heart about what she was trying to do—but perhaps she will reflect after this on the bombastic nature of the briefing with we have been provided, because I do not think that it stacks up.
My second point is an exemplification of that. I stray here into politics, which I know is almost a forbidden thing to do here. But we are told in paragraph 7.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum, headed “Policy background”—a very helpful innovation—that the reason we are amending Regulation 27A of the Conduct Regulations 2003 is that,
“there was a specific commitment from the Prime Minister during his speech on immigration on 21 May 2015 that the Government would make it illegal for employment agencies to recruit solely from abroad without advertising those jobs in Britain and in English”.
That sounds good—it must have been a wonderful soundbite to have prepared, ready to be picked up by the papers at the time. As we read on, the truth is that existing Regulation 27A goes some way towards resolving the problem that the Prime Minister identified, since it is already illegal to advertise specific—not generic—vacancies in other EEA countries without also advertising them in English in the UK.
Again, I do not wish to make a major point, because presumably some people will benefit from the fact that a generic advertisement placed not in English in Lithuania will now have to be placed in English in the UK. I do not want to demean that in any way but, again, I wonder about the tone being adopted here. It did not need to be quite as bombastic as it is. I am sure that the gap has been filled and that is a good thing.
My third point is a very trivial one but I would like an explanation. On the question of implementation and review—my favourite topic—the noble Baroness will be aware that I have an interest in common commencement dates. I was doing all right on this one until I got down to Regulation 1(2), which says:
“These Regulations come into force on … 6th April 2016”.
I like that. It is one of the two common commencement dates for reducing the burden on business. However, it goes on to say that,
“if later, at the end of the period of 21 days beginning with the day on which they are made”.
You cannot have it both ways. It is either a common commencement date or it is not. As we seem to be ahead of 6 April, can I have confirmation from the Minister that we are talking about 6 April and that the conditional phrasing was just a cover in case something went wrong in the great process that we are going through.
Finally, I notice that the review period is covered in the sense that there seems to be a series of reviews stemming from the 2003 regulations, which are said to be in Parliament every five years. The Explanatory Memorandum does not seem to imply that there will be any other reviews going forward. The provision of the existing regulations seems to be for one review and one review only. I just want clarification about the date. It may well be otiose to have a periodic five-year review, but I think that we should be clear whether there is to be a review—and, if so, whether it is a single review after five years or a periodic review.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
I thank the noble Lord for his extremely intelligent questioning of this proposal. I agree that there is a dichotomy. The regulations are quite complex, and we are seeking to change them so that they are deregulatory. I tried to take the noble Lord through paragraph by paragraph because I felt that that was useful to the Committee. At the same time, I think that the memorandum is correct to say that the UK is more lightly regulated in respect of the labour market than other EU member states. So I do not think that the things are contradictory, although I can see that there is the potential for confusion there.
The regulations will come into force 21 days after the beginning of the day they are made. Unfortunately, it is not a common commencement date. Like the noble Lord, I am always asking the department to put things on a common commencement date. Obviously, given the timing, the common commencement date would have to move to October because I do not think that things can be done in time. Therefore, we are commencing the regulations 21 days after they are made, and I will make them tomorrow or the next day. Perhaps I should write to the noble Lord with more information about the conventions. Spiritually, I am with him—I think that common commencement dates are extremely helpful. We have tried to get one here but the timing has overtaken us.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
I do not wish to pressure the noble Baroness in any way whatever, but we have previously had insolvency regulations which are quite clearly coming into effect on 6 April—no buts, no buttons, no relationship, no 21 days here, there or everywhere. They are coming in on 6 April.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
I think that this has caused some confusion in our ranks. I will look into it, but I hope that the Committee will agree that these regulations should come in as soon as we can manage it. They are deregulatory, and I would like to pass them today. So I crave the indulgence of the Committee on this matter, but I will certainly look across the board at the phrasing of commencement dates in future. We always need to learn from feedback, and the noble Lord, as so often, makes a very good point.
I obviously did not explain the point about recruitment agencies adequately. The change we are making is on generic recruitment, which is not covered by the existing regulations. So we are essentially closing a loophole in the existing system of regulation, which currently just covers adverts for specific jobs—for example, an advert for a carpenter in Luton—but it does not cover generic recruitment. It should of course, so we are seeking to make that change.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
In no sense do I wish to delay things, but my point was not that the change in itself is not a good thing—it is a good thing, and the loophole should be closed—but that the bombast had rather got ahead of the action.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
We will watch our bombast for the future. Finally, the noble Lord knows that I feel the same way as him about the importance of periodic review. I will look at how the review clauses of relevant legislation interplay, and in coming back to him I will explain what our intentions are. With those reassurances, I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2016
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
That the Grand Committee do consider the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2016.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to introduce these regulations, which replace the existing flood defence consents scheme with a new scheme under the environmental permitting framework. This debate follows one in the other place and one in the Welsh Assembly earlier this month.
Certain activities in or near watercourses or sea defences can increase flood risk. The Water Resources Act 1991 requires people to seek prior consent before they start such activities on main rivers, to make sure that they are not undertaken in a way that increases flood risk. Main rivers are designated as such due to their higher flood risk, and about 20% of watercourses in England and Wales are designated as main rivers.
The devastating floods we saw this winter demonstrate how important it is that people do not unwittingly increase flood risk to themselves or to others. With no regulation, activities might block or restrict watercourses or the effective operation of the flood plain, leading to flooding of other property that might not have happened otherwise. Equally, flood defence structures might be damaged with the same effect.
Under the current scheme, everyone must submit an individual, detailed application for a bespoke consent whether their proposed activity on a main river has a high or low risk of increasing the risk of flooding. The new flood risk activity permitting scheme introduced by these regulations uses the framework of the environmental permitting regulations to reduce the administrative burdens of applying for a permit. A public consultation on these proposals was held from December 2014 to February 2015, and the proposals were broadly supported. We made a number of improvements as a result of comments made: for example, to include conditions to protect priority river habitats.
The new scheme uses a risk-based and proportionate approach to permitting activities. We will, of course, continue to ensure that flood risk is not increased. High-risk activities will continue to be closely controlled, but activities that cause no increased flood risk to others can be removed from superfluous close scrutiny. As a result, half of all permits that are issued under the current scheme will be eligible for a simpler permit or could be exempt from the need for an application. Under the new scheme the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales have used their experience under the current scheme to categorise activities on main rivers into four bands.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for his introduction. He will know, and has just described, how particularly sensitive the issue of activities on or near watercourses is at the current time, given our recent history of flooding disasters. In particular, we are becoming much more aware of how seemingly small changes upstream can have a cumulative effect further downstream. There is a danger that the impact of relatively small activities is not necessarily contained within a localised area. This has been acknowledged in our trend and that of the department of talking about river flows within a whole catchment area, but we also still have a great deal more to learn about how water flows and the detail of flood management. I think that we are all on a steep learning curve with regard to that. Similarly, I think that it has been acknowledged by the Environment Agency that it has to rethink where its interventions can be most effective.
I can of course see the sense in simplifying the environmental permitting framework, in terms of its paperwork and in the way that the Minister described of not having to make multiple applications for what is effectively one task. But can we be assured that the new emphasis on permits concentrating on larger projects—we have talked about larger risks on or near rivers—will not curtail the Environment Agency’s scope for having a more holistic approach to river management? I am taking into account particularly how a number of small interventions might interact as the river flows on.
As has been said, the proposals claim to put greater focus on risk-based management of watercourses. Do we have the scientific understanding to know what the risks really are, and therefore what practices should be acceptable or unacceptable? It seems that we are in the middle of a rethink on all these issues, so what will be the process of deciding what is high or low risk? Will that judgment be made ultimately by an individual at the Environment Agency?
Can the Minister also reassure me that these proposals are not driven simply by the need for the Environment Agency to make efficiency savings? The truth is that many communities are reassured by seeing that agency’s officers on the ground, working alongside them and often actively anticipating and responding to problems large and small. Can we be reassured that the new risk assessment process that he described will not leave some smaller communities having to face localised problems on their own? Where will the ongoing support be for those small communities?
I also want to ask about the communication process because, while I fully acknowledge that the current permit system is probably far too complex, it seems to have the advantage of alerting a wider group of people that river activity is planned in their area. If there is to be a simplified application process, can we be assured that all those bodies that have been notified in the past and will have an interest in the planned activity will still be made aware of it before the actual activity commences? I am thinking in particular of local authorities and highways authorities, which might have a view on what is proposed.
On the issue of communication, can the Minister clarify how individual householders who may be affected by localised river activity—for example, dredging or bank clearing—will be made aware of this? Such activity could have an impact on their property even if there is no wider flood risk. How will the new permit regime be publicised? How will individuals find out what is being proposed?
Finally, it feels as though we are making changes—the Minister has referred to this—to what might prove to be a rather outdated approach to the whole environmental permit regime. The Cabinet Office review of the flood defence strategy is taking place at the moment and, as I said, the Environment Agency is also looking again at its strategy. The Minister said that there would be a review in 2019. I very much welcome that because it seems to me that, somewhere down the line, we need to look again at taking a more holistic approach to this and at whether the environmental permit scheme that we have is the right way to go about it. Obviously I realise that the review will take some time to be reflected on and worked through, and it may be that the reviews that are taking place are looking at that anyway. It is important that local communities have faith that their interests will be protected in the most effective ways. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Baroness Byford (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for introducing these regulations this afternoon, which will, I think, make life easier for those having to cope with flooding. I have just a couple of issues. First, in the recent flooding of this past year—for example, up in Pickering in Yorkshire—temporary logs were put in to stem the rapid flow of water down the river. Presumably, that did not need any approval—but, if it did, how quickly was that gained? These things can happen very quickly and I am not quite sure how immediate the response to something like that would be. It was a very good initiative and it worked wonders for them. That is just one practical query.
Secondly, of the 53 responses that the Minister had, 74% supported the proposals and, as a result, further discussions took place, for which I am very grateful. He mentioned that they had discussions with the NFU —here I should declare that I am a member. But are there any outstanding issues that could not be included but that the Government wish to think about further? Was there just a small handful of queries or have they managed to resolve all those that were raised?
From my point of view, I welcome anything that eases regulation, providing that the regulations that are in place work. I gather that this will be cost-effective as well, so I welcome the regulations. It is just a matter of making sure that whatever we do is an improvement on the river flow as well as protecting the wildlife and habitats that surround the river. One of the examples given was the whole question of having to put up fencing to keep cattle off at certain times.
I thank the Minister for introducing the regulations, and my query was only a very small one. But sometimes things happen very quickly, and I am not sure whether that is covered by these regulations or where that authority would have to go to get permission to do what it did.
Baroness Parminter (LD)
My Lords, following on from the excellent questions from my colleagues in the Room, I want to ask the Minister for a little more clarification on the point mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, about review. Like my colleagues, I am not opposed to these regulations, but we need to make sure that they work.
The Minister referred to a general review of the environmental permitting regulations in 2019. Is he prepared at this stage to say a little more about what the purpose of that general review at that time is? I think it is quite important, given that there has been a lot of discussion over recent years about cutting back on red tape, that we see not only what the purpose of that is but how reviewing these regulations fits into that.
As a supplementary to that, the Minister mentioned that, in the mean time, before that 2019 review takes place, these regulations will be kept under review. I wonder if he would be prepared to say what exactly that review’s form will be—what monitoring would be undertaken, and what resources would be available—given that, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, there have been some issues relating to funding for both the Environment Agency and Defra in recent years. So the Liberal Democrats are not unhappy with this approach, but it is a new approach and it needs to be reviewed—and we need the resources to ensure that that will happen.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I am most grateful for those remarks, and I am also grateful that there is a general understanding of the purpose of what we want to do. We feel that there are a variety of activities, so it would not be proportionate to have the same sort of approach to permitting for everything; it would be much better if we could direct resources in a more targeted way.
I do not think that anyone can quite comprehend—I certainly cannot—what it was like to have withstood the sort of flooding that we saw in Cumbria, Yorkshire, parts of Durham and Lancashire over the winter. The level of rainfall and the conditions were devastating. Nothing involved in this work here is in any way seeking to shortcut anything that we must do to ensure that we are as well prepared as we can possibly be in this country for those sorts of extreme weather events—or the change in weather patterns or climate change, whatever we want to call it. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, who referred to the reports and ongoing work, that nothing in this piece of work is intended to do anything other than work through sensible permitting arrangements for a range of activities, which I hope are utterly common-sensical and could not possibly increase flood risk. None of us is in the business of doing anything other than reducing and managing flood risk for people. That is absolutely right, because we are all thinking about the holistic basis on which river flow is managed in the whole catchment area of rivers.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, asked how the two regulators will be able to manage river flows on a holistic basis. For instance, the dredging exemption, which has been designed to be used in specific areas, is not about suddenly enabling dredging everywhere: it is about specific areas and for specific purposes. It is framed to deal with any cumulative effects, so it is certainly not, in any way, going to help increase flood risk downstream: quite the reverse. The exemption is limited to the removal of accumulated silt and sand, and expressly prevents the removal of natural gravel or the deepening or widening of the watercourse. Those of us who understand a bit about ditches and drainage know that there are low-lying areas where ditches in good heart prevent flooding, rather than accumulate it further down the river course. It is specifically designed for that sort of work.
Indeed, the noble Baroness rightly asked about how best these matters could be assessed. It is fair to say, and it is the truth, that the public service often gets brickbats and you have to have the hide of a rhinoceros. But the truth is that the people who work for the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales have around four decades of technical and practical experience of assessing the risks of proposed activities in or near watercourses. Their cumulative knowledge is very considerable indeed.
I am very conscious of the way that we look at river courses in the whole catchment area but, having met many Environment Agency staff, I know that they have a very strong local knowledge and interest in how best to manage those watercourses. Over this time, they have advised applicants on how to undertake activities to reduce or remove the risks. I shall say more about resources, but I am confident that on the technical side of those parts of the public service, there are people with immense knowledge.
As I set out in my opening remarks, the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales have used this experience to categorise activities on main rivers into higher and lower risk, and thus into the four bands. Removing the lowest-risk activities from the need for a permit enables the two regulators to concentrate their efforts on considering applications for standard rules permits and bespoke permits. They will publish guidance setting out clearly which activities need consent and when standard rules permits, exemptions and exclusions apply, as well as other aspects of the scheme. It is obviously very important in communications to local householders, businesses or farmers that the new scheme is understood.
In response to a point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones—I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, also referred to this—I reassure your Lordships that there will be no reduction in the number of Environment Agency staff that will be seen on the ground as a result of this scheme. Indeed, in last week’s Budget the Government announced an increase in maintenance expenditure in England of £40 million a year. As a result, I believe that their presence on the riverbank will increase as they undertake more maintenance activities around the country.
I am also very happy to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, that these regulations have not been motivated by any question of efficiency savings by the two agencies—far from it. These regulations were drawn up in recognition of the fact that we could safely reduce oversight of the many low-risk activities that are undertaken and thereby reduce red tape for applicants. The new scheme will also reduce administrative burdens for the regulators. These savings mean that their costs will be lower, and thus fees under the new scheme will also be lower than they would otherwise have been.
I was asked a number of questions, which I hope to be able to answer, but if I do not provide the fullest detail I will write to noble Lords. My noble friend Lady Byford was absolutely right to mention the issue of slowing the flow. We know that the Pickering scheme has been deemed to be very successful and I am sure that we will hear much more about it, but I must not pre-empt any reports that come out. The response from my guardians behind me is that, if people need to take action to avoid flooding in any sort of emergency, they do not need to apply for a permit; this sort of activity is covered by an exclusion. In that case, we would want the capability to deal with an emergency as promptly as possible.
My noble friend Lady Byford also asked about the consultation and whether the Government were considering any other proposals. Of course, we would be open to any suggestions for further exclusions, exemptions and standard rules permits, but we would need to examine any proposals very carefully to ensure that the conditions of use could be applied across the country. Clearly, with the exemptions and exclusions, we have sought to take what I would call the common-sense approach about what is sensible to have in an exemption or exclusion so that we can concentrate on the large proportion of work that will need bespoke permits, because that is where we need to ensure that we get everything absolutely right.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, asked about the notification of local authorities in particular. Although the environmental permitting framework does not require prior consultation on the take-up of standard rules permits, exemptions or exclusions—these are low-risk activities and a consultation on the conditions for them was undertaken in 2014-15—when we move to bespoke permits, clearly we need to be working extremely effectively to ensure that there is notification. For instance, local authorities will be notified of any bespoke permits that have the potential for a significant effect on the environment, which is very important indeed.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Jones of Whitchurch, asked about the review, and again I hope that I can provide some reassurance on this matter. As I said in my opening remarks, we will review the new flood risk activity scheme in 2019 as part of the general review into the environmental permitting regulations. Clearly, in the mean time, we will keep the activities permitted under exemptions, exclusions and standard rules permits, and their conditions, under review, and will introduce new exemptions or revising conditions if it is necessary or appropriate.
As to the purpose of the 2019 review, it must assess the extent to which the objectives of the review have been achieved, whether the objectives remain appropriate and whether they could be achieved in a less burdensome way. That is the basis of the review. But clearly, as experience of this new scheme comes along, I am sure the Environment Agency and others in Wales will reflect on this, as I said. The important thing is that there will be this opportunity for a general review in 2019.
Clearly, it is absolutely essential that no one unwittingly increases the flood risk, either for themselves or for others. The intention of this permitting scheme is to ensure that all activities are properly assessed and that action is taken if people act outside the conditions of a permit. These regulations remove the requirement to fill out unnecessary forms prior to carrying out low-risk activities and enable the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales to focus their resources on evaluating higher-risk activities.
I will reflect on all the points that have been made. I hope that I have covered them to your Lordships’ satisfaction, but this is a proportionate move in terms of seeking to direct our resources to where people and their property can derive the most benefit. For those reasons, I commend the regulations to your Lordships.
Third Parties (Rights against Insurers) Regulations 2016
(8 years, 9 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Faulks
That the Grand Committee do consider the Third Parties (Rights against Insurers) Regulations 2016.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Faulks) (Con)
My Lords, the draft regulations extend the range of people who are potentially within the scope of the Third Parties (Rights against Insurers) Act 2010. Subject to the prior approval of both Houses of Parliament, the draft regulations are to be made by the Secretary of State under the power in Section 19 of the 2010 Act. Section 19, in its present form, was inserted into the 2010 Act by Section 19 of the Insurance Act 2015. The purpose of the power is to make provision for adding or removing circumstances in which a person is potentially within the scope of the 2010 Act. The present circumstances within that scope are currently set out in Sections 4 to 7 of and paragraph 1A of Schedule 3 to the 2010 Act.
The draft regulations make a series of textual amendments to the 2010 Act, as amended by the Insurance Act 2015. The effect of the amendments in general terms will be to include corporate and other bodies that are subject to certain sectoral insolvency regimes or, within limited exceptions, have been dissolved within the scope of the 2010 Act. The purpose of making these amendments is to correct omissions from the 2010 Act so that it can be brought into force without adversely affecting people who are currently within the scope of the 1930s legislation that is to be replaced by the 2010 Act.
It may be helpful at this point if I explain the principles that underlie the third parties legislation in a little more detail. It has existed since the 1930s and is so called because the claimant is a third party in relation to the contract of insurance. The current legislation is the 1930 Act, which applies to England, Wales and Scotland, and the Third Parties (Rights against Insurers) Act (Northern Ireland) 1930. The purpose of the 1930 Acts, and indeed of the 2010 Act, is to protect the interests of claimants against insured persons who have a liability to the claimant but who no longer have effective control of their assets, typically because they are insolvent. The basic effect of the third parties legislation is to transfer to a third party to whom the insured has incurred a liability the contractual rights of the insured against the insurer as regards that liability. This means that the proceeds of the insurance policy are paid to the claimant, not to the creditors of the insolvent insured generally.
The 2010 Act is intended to extend and improve the protection conferred by the 1930 Acts. To trigger the application of the 2010 Act, an insured must both incur a liability to a third party against which it is insured and undergo an insolvency or analogous event specified in the 2010 Act. Unfortunately, following the enactment of the 2010 Act it was found, in some respects, to have a narrower scope than the 1930s Acts. This was partly as a result of the terms used in the drafting of the 2010 Act and partly because of developments in insolvency law following the financial crisis in 2008.
Had the 2010 Act been commenced immediately after its enactment, the effect would have been to deny insurance proceeds to claimants and to pass them to be shared out among the insured’s creditors. This would have frustrated the very purpose of the 2010 Act and had the effect of undermining the purpose of compulsory insurance, such as that which employers are required to maintain. The operative provisions of the 2010 Act have therefore not yet been brought into force and will not be so until these defects have been remedied. The remedial process is therefore essential to realising the benefits of the 2010 Act. Part of the remedial process was effected by the amendments to the 2010 Act made by the Insurance Act 2015. The draft regulations will complete the process.
I will now describe the working of the amendments to be effected by those draft regulations. First, they would extend the list of such insolvency or analogous events by adding the sectoral insolvency or administration procedures listed or referred to in the provisions to be inserted in the 2010 Act by Regulation 3 of the draft regulations. These additions cover the possibility of insolvency or administration under special legislative regimes that generally follow, but are distinct from, the Insolvency Act 1986 in a wide range of important business sectors where company failure has the potential to damage public interest or cause market contagion—for example, financial services and postal or energy companies.
Secondly, Regulation 4 of the draft regulations extends the scope of the 2010 Act to dissolved bodies, other than unincorporated partnerships and bodies that are no longer treated as dissolved by reason of subsequent events. The 2010 Act currently applies to dissolutions under Sections 1001, 1002 or 1003 of the Companies Act 2006 but not to other dissolutions, even though dissolution, after which a body will certainly not have effective control over its rights and assets, would appear to be the paradigm case in which a transfer of rights should occur. Regulation 4 therefore broadens the scope of the application of the 2010 Act to these other dissolutions.
The one exception to the proposed coverage of dissolutions generally is the dissolution of unincorporated partnerships. This exception is sensible, as technically a partnership dissolves each time a new partner leaves or is added. This would extend the scope of the legislation too widely, as many such partnerships would be going concerns. In the case of a partnership which is no longer trading, the insured would need to proceed against the individual partners.
The remainder of the draft regulations deal with ancillary matters. Regulations 5 and 6 amend Section 9 and paragraph 3 of Schedule 1 to the 2010 Act respectively. Section 9(3) and (7) of the 2010 Act provide that a third-party claimant does not have to satisfy a condition of the insurance policy regarding provision of information or assistance to the insurer by the insured if it cannot be fulfilled because the insured has died or is a body corporate which has been dissolved. Paragraph 3 of Schedule 1 to the 2010 Act gives a claimant the right to request information from officers, employees, insolvency practitioners or official receivers of a defunct body corporate, other than when the dissolved body has been restored or ordered to be restored to the register of companies. The draft regulations extend these two provisions to all dissolutions, other than those of unincorporated partnerships, irrespective of whether subsequent events result in the body in question being treated as if it is no longer dissolved or as if it had never been dissolved.
The reason for the wider application of these provisions as against the provisions relating to dissolved bodies inserted into the 2010 Act by Regulation 4 is that most such situations reversing a dissolution—for example, restoration to the register of companies—are temporary and unlikely to result in there being a person who is responsible and able, on behalf of the body in question, to assist the claimant by being able to fulfil the condition or to supply the information in relation to the liability.
Before I conclude, I should like to express my department’s thanks to all those who have contributed to the preparation of the draft regulations. It is not a simple matter, as I suspect noble Lords will concede. Insolvency law is fast moving and complicated. The Insolvency Service, the Accountant in Bankruptcy in Scotland and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in Northern Ireland have all made significant contributions to what has been a very difficult technical exercise. I am very grateful to them. I am also very grateful to the Commercial and Common Law Team at the Law Commission, which for most of the period in question was led by David Hertzell and Tammy Goriely, without whose expert knowledge and legal skills the draft regulations could not easily have been prepared. Finally, in a more general sense, I thank the Law Commission and the Scottish Law Commission for their continuing support for the reform of third parties legislation generally. I hope that in the not too distant future we shall be able to make that reform a reality.
In conclusion, the reforms to be introduced by the 2010 Act are supported by insurers and claimants alike. They apply to insurance of all kinds and will be particularly beneficial in cases of long-tail industrial diseases, such as mesothelioma. The approval of the draft regulations by your Lordships’ House will be widely welcomed and will be a key step on the way to the commencement of the 2010 Act.
I am afraid that I am not yet in a position to state when the Act will be brought fully into force, as the draft regulations remain subject to your Lordships’ approval and to approval in the other place. Nevertheless, I can say that, subject to allowing all parties affected no less than three months from the making of the regulations in which to prepare for commencement, the Government’s intention is to bring the 2010 Act, as amended by the 2015 Act and by what will then be the Third Parties (Rights against Insurers) Regulations 2016, into force as soon as reasonably practicable. I beg to move.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation and also for bringing this set of regulations forward for our consideration and for the House’s approval in due course. It is an extremely important area which I think anybody practising in the common-law field values very much. I have only one question and that is to ask for reassurance in relation to part of Regulation 3, which deals with the relevant bodies in insolvency or administration under sectoral legislation. This is an extremely sophisticated area of law and I join in the Minister’s congratulations to all those who have played a part in putting all this together.
A feature of the list of enactments set out in Schedule A1 is that all except the last deal with areas of regulation which are common to the United Kingdom, with the special provisions made in the case of Northern Ireland which are set out in the schedule. Aviation, energy, financial services, postal services and railways apply equally to Scotland as they do to England and Wales. But the question of water and sewerage has occurred to me, because Scotland, I believe, has its own legislation relating to sewers and water: there is the Water (Scotland) Act, the date of which escapes me, and I believe that there is a sewerage Act for Scotland as well.
I fear that without detailed research, which is beyond my resources at the moment, I am not sure whether the Scottish legislation provides for administration under a legislative scheme. I am fairly confident that the Water Industry Act 1991, referred to here, does not extend to Scotland. It may well be that those who have been looking at this in detail have reassured themselves that there is no need for a mention of the Scottish legislation, perhaps because it does not actually provide for this kind of administration. If that is right, of course I understand why there is no mention of those statutes, but it might be as well to be absolutely sure that there is not a gap here that ought to be plugged before the regulations are brought into force.
That aside, I regard this as a very fine piece of fine-tuning which I am sure will be greatly welcomed in order to avoid any further gaps in the valuable legislation.
Lord Bach (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for his explanation of this statutory instrument. I confirm that it is not controversial in the slightest. We are happy to support it, as we supported, of course, the 2010 Bill as it went through Parliament. Indeed, I hope I may be forgiven for reminding the Grand Committee—it was some time ago now—that I was the Minister who took that Law Commission Bill through this House, using the special procedure. I was assisted then by an excellent team from the Ministry of Justice and I suspect—indeed, I am sure—that the Minister has been so assisted today.
The Minister will know that we on this side have many criticisms of much that the Ministry of Justice does these days, but in this area of complex but important law-making and law revision, we have nothing but praise. I have a couple of questions and comments for the Minister’s consideration, but they are brief.
The first point is about paragraph 8 of the Explanatory Memorandum, which deals with the consultation outcome. It says that the APIL and the ABI—the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers and the Association of British Insurers—have been consulted and are broadly content. The memorandum states:
“Both organisations expressed general approval of the Regulations”.
Is there a particular meaning to the word “general” in that particular context? I am pretty reassured that there is not, because I have a letter here from APIL itself, which suggests that it is happy with the regulations, but I wonder what the expression means in that context—probably nothing.
Lord Faulks
I am very grateful for those observations and for the support for the regulations which was expressed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and by the noble Lord, Lord Bach. As I am sure many in the Committee well remember from what became the 2010 Act, the noble Lord has been involved in this for some time and is familiar with this complex area of law.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, with his customary forensic skill, identified the absence of a specific reference to water and sewerage in Scotland. The question is whether the Scottish legislation needs to be mentioned. The UK Government have consulted the Scottish Government and the Accountant in Bankruptcy about the water legislation, and are content that no special mention is necessary. I am none the less extremely grateful to the noble and learned Lord for having mentioned it. This is such a complex area that it is not impossible to omit something, although I glad that in this instance it had been specifically considered.
The noble Lord, Lord Bach, made a number of comments, and I very much echo what he said in tribute to those who work in this area in the Ministry of Justice, and the extreme skill and dedication that they have to it. I am grateful for this comments in that respect. As to his specific questions, the use of the word “general” was not, as I understand it, in any sense supposed to imply that while they generally approved of it, they did not approve of specific aspects of it. As he may remember, the 2010 Act represents a compromise between insurers and claimants, designed by the Law Commission after extensive consultation.
The changes made in the Insurance Act 2015, and to be made in these draft regulations, are supported both by the ABI and APIL, as the noble Lord said. Both have expressed the clear view that they would like these regulations to be brought into force as soon as possible—there is no reservation about it. Therefore, the use of “general” in the Explanatory Notes is supposed to convey that. I accept that there could conceivably be considered to be some ambiguity, but I assure noble Lords that there is not.
I can confirm that the charitable sector, along with all stakeholders, is content with the change in the law which this will bring into effect.
Finally, the noble Lord asked about the impact assessment and, in particular, paragraph 10 of the Explanatory Memorandum. The point made in paragraph 10.4 is that the costs are,
“not easy to quantify … The Ministry … expects that when 2010 Act, as amended by the Insurance Act 2015 and the Regulations is commenced, it will generate a small net benefit to business”—
mainly insurers and claimants because of the ease with which the process should now be able to be undertaken—
“but that any aggregate impacts will be significantly less than £1 million per annum”.
The Explanatory Memorandum goes on to explain that,
“the circumstances added by the Regulations will probably only account for a fraction of this. However, we do not know how often these circumstances will apply; how many people will be affected”.
However, it seems that it comes well within the range of those regulations that do not require a specific impact assessment.
Our submission is that these regulations are very much to be welcomed. I am grateful for all the hard work that has gone into providing their final realisation during what has been quite a long process to get here. They will extend the scope of the 2010 Act to include the specific sectoral insolvency and administration regimes and most dissolved bodies, and the benefits of the 2010 Act will now be delivered without exposing some claimants who are protected by third-party legislation to a worse situation than they currently are in because of the omissions in the original Act. In those circumstances, I commend the draft regulations to the House.
Autism
Baroness Browning
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to improve the speed and quality of autism diagnoses in the United Kingdom.
Baroness Browning (Con)
My Lords, I refer to the register of my interests as a vice-president of the National Autistic Society, and to an outside interest in leadership training in the NHS. I should also declare that I am patron of Research Autism and the Autism Diagnostic Research Centre in Southampton.
Why is there a need to improve both the speed and the quality of a diagnosis in autism? It seems to me a pretty straightforward question, and that the answer is rather obvious. Speed is very important, particularly when one looks at some of the more complex cases, but in order for that to be processed and for someone to be referred to the right person, it requires sufficient people to be trained both for children and adult diagnosis. A recent case was brought to my attention of a 50 year-old man in full-time employment in Kent. It has taken two years for him to receive a diagnosis.
The latest Public Health England waiting times show that from the first referral to the first appointment—in other words, not the whole process of diagnosis but that very first step—takes up to 95 weeks in the south-west and, in Yorkshire and Humber, 84 weeks. We are looking at a postcode lottery. I am aware that in some areas the situation is better than that, but around the country we see people waiting for far too long. The quality of the diagnosis is important, too, as well as what happens after it is given. Autism, as we know, is a lifelong condition, and the diagnosis is the passport to an improved quality of life, including support not just for the autistic person but for parents, siblings and carers.
There are still too many problems at each stage of what the NHS refers to as the “pathways”. It is terminology that I absolutely hate but I am going to have to use it today, because I think everyone will know what I mean by it—that is, the various steps taken from the time that someone presents, or someone is noticed or a problem arises and somebody along the line says, “Well, could this be autism?”. The National Autistic Society has done a lot of work on this, and its recent assessment is that it is very important that every area has a clear route, from raising concerns to being referred for a diagnosis, having the assessment and then getting the care and support that necessarily must come afterwards.
Sometimes people get a referral only after visiting their GP multiple times. This can be down to poor GP awareness as well as people being wrongly diagnosed with other conditions such as anxiety, depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder. There is a need for GP training and for GPs to become more established as the important gatekeepers that they are. I am pleased to welcome the initiative of the Royal College of General Practitioners. Two years ago it set up a clinical priority group under the chairmanship of Dr Carole Buckley, who has been doing some excellent work around the country. We need GPs to be aware enough to make an appropriate referral in a timely way, together with social workers, teachers, educational psychologists and in fact many others—not just professionals but people who have an awareness and understanding of autism, who can say, “This could be autism”. If that is the case, it needs the appropriate referral.
That is particularly so now with girls as well as boys. Ten or 20 years ago, girls were reckoned to be about one in 10 of people diagnosed with autism. That perception has changed quite dramatically in the last five to 10 years. We now know that there are a lot more girls on the autistic spectrum but they often present differently from boys and therefore diagnosing them requires specialist knowledge. It is a communication disorder, of course, which means that very often the way in which girls communicate can be different from the way that boys communicate. That can raise challenges in terms of the diagnosis.
Across the country there is wide variation in the length of time that people wait for an assessment after being referred. NICE guidance says that it should be no longer than three months, which the Government have repeatedly stated that clinical commissioning groups should be meeting. They are not meeting it. I say to the Minister that the Government need to be far more proactive with clinical commissioning groups. Adult data show that the average in England is 13 weeks while in areas of the south-west, as I said, it is as long as 95 weeks. This is from the 2014 local authority self-assessment on the Autism Act.
It would be very helpful if the Government could collect diagnosis waiting times for adults and children centrally and hold CCGs to account on meeting the NICE targets. One of the other problems about these waiting times is that there is no true picture of the number of people being diagnosed or the number who are waiting, which leads to a lack of provision to cope with the numbers and the reality. It would be very helpful across the piece for health, education and social services to have a much better feel for how many people there are, where they are and what the timescale is that they are working to.
Once people get a diagnosis, too many report that they are not getting the support they need, including in those essential areas of mental health, speech and language therapy and social care. It is of course included in the Autism Act’s statutory guidance for adults, but autistic people tell us that, far too often, this is not happening. What will the Government do to make sure that NHS England’s work under the Mental Health Task Force to create a care pathway for autism will include post-diagnostic support for all autistic people and will hold areas to account?
There is another area which the Government need to address urgently. Part of the reason is, I believe, the lack of leadership within NHS England on autism. Currently, the lead for autism is the clinical lead for learning disability and autism. It is quite true that there are people who have a dual diagnosis, but the lead sits within the transforming care team, which of course leads important work on closing inappropriate in-patient units for people with complex needs. But there is a strong case for a national clinical director for autism to drive progress within NHS England across the autism spectrum. Clinical directors exist for other conditions including learning disability, dementia and mental health, and we have seen great strides forward in areas where there is a dedicated clinical lead. I ask my noble friend again today: will the Minister support the call for NHS England to develop leadership on autism, because that is where the driver is and where it could so improve the situation?
I also draw my noble friend’s attention to the question, which I have mentioned already, of the implementation of the Autism Act 2009. When I was in another place, I was delighted to have the opportunity to be part of the team that took the Autism Bill through to become an Act. Apart from mental health, it is the only medical condition which has its own Act of Parliament. That should be a clear indicator of how important Parliament considers this condition.
However, I say to my noble friend that I am concerned. Despite the fact that it was written into Section 3 of the Autism Act that local authorities and NHS bodies have a duty to act under guidance, I get the impression that that part of the Act is not being implemented as robustly as it should be by the Minister.
I remind people of what that very important part of the Act says. It says that,
“an NHS body is to be treated as if it were a local authority within the meaning of”,
the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970, and that,
“the functions of an NHS body”,
mean that the Minister can call it to account if is not implementing guidance as it should. It gives statutory backing and power to the Minister—on NHS bodies and of course on local authorities—to make sure that this guidance is being properly implemented.
My noble friend may want to write to me on this. I would like to know just how many times the Minister has exercised Section 3 of the Autism Act, since it was put on the statute book, with either an NHS body or a local authority. It seems that this should be used by the Minister to drive forward the very issue that we are talking about, among other parts of guidance—to make sure that people not only get their diagnosis in a timely way and that it is an effective diagnosis in terms of its quality, and that the follow-up on the services identified by the statutory guidance for the Autism Act is implemented as well.
I am very grateful to colleagues across the House who have attended this debate today and I hope that when she sums up, my noble friend will be able to reassure us.
Lord Touhig (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to someone whom I am proud to call my noble friend—the noble Baroness, Lady Browning—for securing this debate. She is a formidable, constant and doughty champion for people and families with autism.
When a couple whom I have known for many years told me that they suspected that their child was autistic, I advised them to keep a diary along the lines suggested by the National Autistic Society, of which, like the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, I am a vice-president; I must declare my interest. They did this and took the diary to their GP, who tossed it aside and said, “I have seen these sorts of things before”. I became rather angry, and when I discovered that the senior partner in the practice was someone I knew, I rang him up and, quite bluntly, said, “Pull your bloody finger out and get this child a diagnosis”. That should not have been necessary but in so many cases, the hardest part about living with autism is getting a diagnosis in the first place.
The National Autistic Society’s research indicates that adults have to wait more than two years for a diagnosis and children are waiting three years, even though the NICE guidelines clearly state that the time between referral from a GP and diagnostic appointment should be three months. A diagnosis begins to unlock the door to getting support and help and to gaining a better understanding of an autistic person’s needs, yet there is often a barrier put up by the National Health Service and those working in the service. I am sure that it is not meant that way, and that those working in the health service would be horrified to think that it is, but too many in the NHS erect a barrier —for whatever reason—prolonging the time that it takes to get a diagnosis. That barrier must come down. The diagnosis is the first step for autistic people, enabling them to access the right support and begin a better quality of life. A survey carried out by the National Autistic Society revealed that 61% of people who responded felt relieved to get a diagnosis, while 58% said that it led to them getting new or more support.
For many with autism, it is the first chance to get an insight into why they feel and act differently. Naoki Higashida, a young Japanese autistic boy who wrote The Reason I Jump—a book which I have quoted a number times—posed a number of questions about people with autism. He asked, “Why do people with autism talk so loudly and weirdly? Why do people with autism do things they shouldn’t, even when they are told not to do them a million times? Why do people with autism take ages to answer questions?” People with autism ask these questions of themselves, often not getting an answer or an understanding. Not until they have a diagnosis does support and understanding of their needs follow.
The families of people with autism often say that delays in getting diagnoses led to the development of serious mental health problems, both for the individual and for their family. It is therefore important that people with suspected autism are able to access a timely diagnosis wherever they live in the country. When, in February 2015, I asked a series of Written Questions about autism diagnosis, the then Minister, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, replied that data on:
“The number of children diagnosed with autism is not collected centrally”.
However, if we do not know the extent of the need, how can we really respond to it properly? The best thing would be to create an autism register to be registered with every GP. The National Autistic Society, in its autism diagnosis crisis campaign, is calling on the Government and the NHS in England to take this action; already, 12,000 people have signed a letter in support. Surely, the NHS should collect, publish and monitor key information about how long people are waiting for a diagnosis and how many people’s autism is known to their GPs.
The NHS should ensure that waiting time standards on mental health, currently in development, reflect national guidance and that no one waits longer than three months between referral and being seen for diagnosis. The Government must share in this commitment, ensuring that the NHS in England meets its aims. Timely access to an autism diagnosis should be written into the Government’s mandate to the NHS in England.
I am conscious that some people might want to speak in the gap, so I will cut my remarks accordingly. I will end by sharing with the Grand Committee a case study that expresses more eloquently than I can how an early diagnosis might have made a huge difference to the life of one young person. The names are changed to protect the families’ anonymity. Jane is 50 and Michael, her husband, is 51. They have a son, Dan, who is 15 and they live in the south of England. It took Dan’s parents almost six years to get a diagnosis from the point where they started seeking an autism assessment, although they had started looking for answers two years before that. During those years, his parents were repeatedly told by professionals that he was not on the spectrum. The diagnosis happened only when they went private to get a diagnosis. Dan was diagnosed with autism only last year, six years after his parents raised the issue of autism with professionals and eight years since they first sought help. The delay had a huge impact on his health, his mental health, his education and his family. His mother wrote that:
“With the help of the firm diagnosis, I was able to fight successfully to get funding for Dan to go to an independent school which specialises in children with various difficulties, including autism. The school understands anxiety and has small classes, so Dan can learn without stress. The impact on Dan’s education of not receiving an earlier diagnosis cannot be overestimated: he lost four years of his school education and is having to repeat a year so that he can take his GCSEs. He is a bright boy and loves learning, so he is delighted to be back at school again. The delays also had a huge impact on Dan’s mental health, as well as our family’s … What makes me really angry is that I know there are plenty of children who still don’t have the help they need”,
in order to fulfil their life potential. We have an opportunity in Parliament, as politicians and as Ministers, to do something about this. We have an opportunity to make a difference. That is why we are here. I hope that the Government are listening; I am sure that they are, but we really have to keep pressing for some improvements.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to be backing up the noble Baroness on this subject. If we are breaking the rules and saying “my noble friend”, then to hell with the rules, basically.
We are returning to a subject on which I feel there is going to be a tremendous amount of agreement; the downside is the fact that we are having to say it again. We have had to say this very often. The main thrust is that we have specific legislation that backs up other general legislation, giving rights to these people and responsibilities to the state that are simply not being enacted. That is the long and the short of it. There are a series of rights and, as the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, has just pointed out, the people who get them are the ones who fight and get it recognised. There is an old cliché about anyone who has been involved in any part of the disability movement: if you want to be a successful disabled person, choose your parents very carefully. I think that the best combination is a journalist and a lawyer—a person who will tell you about the law and someone to tell those who are not enacting the law publicly that they have failed. I have seen over and again that the person who shouts, with the right language and in the right way, gets their rights. The rest do not.
The experiences of autism are so similar to the world that I come from—that is, of dyslexia—that it is not worth setting out any differences between them; the principle applies to both. Then we have the joys and delights of co-occurrence of disability, which is very common. All these things come down to the fact that we have a series of pieces of legislation that are not being enacted correctly, and we have to drag people into enacting them.
Before I move on to my main point, I want to back up one point that the noble Baroness made. All these hidden disabilities seem to suggest in their initial stages that the males with the condition greatly outnumbered the females. Then a combination of practice and new social mores when looking at people showed that this was not the case, or at least that the discrepancy was not nearly as great as had previously been conceived. I hope that the Minister will have some way of looking at that and saying exactly how often this occurs. It is quite clear in all these hidden disabilities that the female of the species is much better at keeping its head down, not getting spotted, not causing trouble and not attracting attention. If we can look at that, we might start to get an idea of the true picture because it is also true in all these cases that the male who follows that example is ignored. Can we have a look at that type of behaviour?
I want to draw attention to something that the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, mentioned in passing: education. At the moment, when it comes to special educational needs, a teacher who is going to receive dozens of groups and several predominant groups might receive an afternoon or a couple of hours on the subject. I met a young man, introduced to me by a volunteer in my office, who had missed his special educational needs unit because he had had a doctor’s appointment that day and was under no pressure to go back and take it. Two hours. Could noble Lords learn to spell dyscalculic, dyslexic or autism, if they did not know already, in two hours, even if they do not have one of those conditions? I rather doubt it. Effectively, what we seem to be assuming in teacher education is a slap in the face.
Remember how much time people spend in classrooms. Remember how much time those at the higher end of the autistic spectrum, those who do not have the glaringly obvious problems, will spend there. There is so much opportunity for a teacher who has at least some awareness training to be able to say, “I think this child has a particular problem. They will need to be told about it and they need strategies in their learning and social behaviour to enable them to function in society”. Even if you do not go to a formal diagnosis but have some awareness that you might be there, just think about how much potential that could release. Think about how you might be able to get somebody in a position where they could handle further education better, or higher education. We have passed Acts and done things that enable people to get through this. We give them extra money, extra time. We have just passed things that gave them this ability. If you do not identify and support in the teaching staff, you are missing the chance to make a person aware that they are doing this and you will not be able to say, “You need to take a slightly different teaching strategy to get the best out of this person and you will get them through”. How much waste is actually built into the system there?
Is this a wonderful revelation from me? No, it was first put forward in the Lamb review. I think that was in 2009; I cannot remember off the top of my head. The difference between dyslexics and autistics is that we do not like facts and figures in nice, straight lines. I do not know how co-occurrence happens. It is an established principle that we have badly trained teachers in this area. Unless we can get in there, we will ensure that we do not identify them, and, even if we have identified, we will make sure that that teacher does not know how to adapt the lesson to get the best out of it. This is made even more absurd when we take on the fact that they have a legal duty to teach that person.
Effectively, in this huge part of a person’s life, teachers at the moment have a legal duty to do something which they are not trained to do. That is a disaster for anybody who has problems with learning patterns that are not of the mainstream. Autism just happens to be one of the more glaring examples.
Lord Warner (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I am sure we are all grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, for giving us the opportunity to debate this important subject and for sharing with us her expertise and experience in this area. Despite my four years as a Health Minister, this is my debut on this subject. That probably indicates how hidden the subject of autism often is. My involvement arises from my experience with my six year-old grandson, who is on the spectrum and probably suffers from Asperger’s—I should declare this interest.
Normally, I never bring family matters into discussion of public policy in this House but, although I have not formally consulted my grandson about using his example, I am sure he would approve of my doing so today. He likes to star in stories about himself and his alter egos. One of his favourite alter egos is Seal, so I shall describe him as Seal for the rest of this speech.
My experience is that Seal has been jolly lucky with the individuals that he has encountered on the journey that he has travelled so far. That has nothing whatever to do with any NHS system. The NICE guidance could have been written in Mandarin Chinese as far as Seal’s NHS encounters go. What has happened is that he has never been through a CAMHS system and never really been referred by a GP, yet he has progressed through the system. Seal is a quirky, infuriating, endearing, courageous, vulnerable, obsessive, controlling, physically strong little boy who, for some of the time, is great fun to be with and, at other times, would drive a saint to distraction.
If, as a family, you have a diagnosis, you can learn how to cope with the predictable unpredictability of the young person’s condition. Perhaps more importantly, you can help the child to learn coping mechanisms for processing and dealing with this very strange world that he inhabits. Seal now knows that he is a very different person from the children around him in his mainstream school, but he also knows that there are a number of adults and other children who are trying to help him. Without that diagnosis and its follow-up, Seal would almost certainly not be in a mainstream school or have many friends his own age. Whether his family would have been able to cope with him must also be very open to doubt.
Seal is where he is not because of the NHS but almost despite it. An energetic nursery school manager pressured a local children’s community team to observe him and diagnose him. That team produced an excellent profile of him, and when he moved house the team did the right thing and passed the assessment to the GP practice in his new area. The practice promptly filed it and did nothing. Some time later, what I like to describe as a “House of Lords intervention” ensured that he was seen by a community paediatrician, who then worked with the school that Seal was placed in and produced a diagnosis. Seal has the services that he needs because of that school’s excellent SENCO, not because of the NHS. The school drove the preparation of an education, care and health plan and ensured that the community paediatrician gave a clear diagnosis. That has led to this child being in the system; the NHS has contributed very little to getting him into the system. It has taken three years, but I have to say that his experience has been very different from what I hear from many parents of children with autism who Seal and his family meet in the local support group.
I have told this personal story to illustrate the lack of any kind of easy-to-use system for many of the parents of autistic children. I have read the NICE guidance, and they are worthy, professional documents. However, I suspect that their recommended timescales for diagnosis are observed more in their absence rather than in the actual experience of parents. Relying on a GP referral to CAMHS is simply not a credible system unless there is to be a massive investment in GP training and CAHMS. Building alternative routes through nurseries and schools, and accessing community paediatricians, might offer the prospect of speedier diagnoses in some areas.
That does not mean I want the NHS to be let off the hook. It should certainly be capturing more data and comparing local health areas on the total time taken to secure an autism diagnosis. The NHS would be helped by working with local education systems if there were more progress on a common identifier for children who need both health and social care services. The Minister might like to give us some advice on how much progress is being made in this area, where change is long overdue. Will she also ask NHS England to separate the commissioning of autism services from learning disabilities, starting especially with children? If she cannot answer my questions today, I would be grateful if she could write to me.
Baroness Rock (Con)
My Lords, I add my thanks to my noble friend Lady Browning for bringing to this House such an important debate.
People on the autistic spectrum perceive the world differently from others. They find the rest of us strange and baffling. Why do we not say what we mean? Why do we tolerate such a confusion of sensations of light, smell, sound, touch and taste without screaming? Why do we have such complicated emotional relationships? Why do we send and receive so many social signals to each other and how do we make sense of them? Why are we so illogical?
More than 700,000 people in the UK today are currently diagnosed with autism. If you include their families, autism touches the lives of over 2.8 million people. I am one of them. As the mother of a child with special educational needs, I have experienced at first hand the challenges and stresses of raising a child who sees the world differently and finds frightening the things that we take for granted. However, and I really cannot emphasise this enough, I have also experienced the rewards and joys of raising a child who is atypical and unique, and who brings so many unexpected qualities that surprise and enrich our lives. We are lucky; we managed to access the right support and the right schooling.
Why is speed and quality of diagnosis so necessary? It is simply because a diagnosis clarifies special educational and behavioural needs and the means to get those needs met, and gives entitlement to services and financial support. It is the first concrete step on a long journey. We are making progress. Autism diagnosis has increased by a factor of 25 in the last 30 years, but still only two-thirds of children and one in 10 adults with autism have a diagnosis. However, a critical question is: how can parents recognise that their child is on the autistic spectrum? Every child presents differently, and children with the same label may be more different than they are alike.
Early-years educationalists and childcare workers have the insight and ability to recognise communication and behavioural issues, and therefore can take more responsibility in helping parents to assess their child’s difficulties and enable specific diagnosis on a timely scale. I am not advocating that every teacher or childcare worker needs to be a neurodevelopmental expert; on the contrary, it is their collective experience and observation of children with difficulties in school and their close communication with parents that puts them in a unique position. With training, they can enable parents to articulate their concerns and to have those concerns acted upon, wherever that might lead, whether it is diagnosis or other support.
For many parents, it is difficult and frightening to comprehend what is “normal” behaviour and what is a cause for concern that needs professional input. In my case, my child was my first-born and I had no basis of comparison. It is truly overwhelming to be in that position, but harnessing the good sense of educationalists early on is a really important resource. We need to acknowledge that they are a crucial part of the diagnostic process. As professionals, they have an empathy and perspective that can be nurtured and encouraged to support parents. Timely identification of social communication problems puts parents and children on to specific autism pathways, as my noble friend Lady Browning mentioned, which can then initiate and expedite diagnosis.
The impact of living with a child with autism can be devastating for many families. The high incidence of marital breakdown where a family has a disabled child speaks for itself, and there is growing concern about the mental health costs to siblings and other family members. Being the parent of a child with autism can be one of the loneliest places in the world. Acknowledgment and affirmation of the valuable contribution of early-years educationalists and childcare workers towards supporting parents to get the right diagnosis will lead to the right help. This transforms lives.
Baroness Hollins (CB)
My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register, including my chairmanship of an expert reference group on workforce learning disability services, and congratulate the noble Baroness on this debate.
My own expertise with autism as a psychiatrist is with the 30% of people with learning disabilities who also have autism. Some people with autism have a learning disability but most do not, which is a very important point to bear in mind. The Royal College of Psychiatrists joins the National Autistic Society and others in their concerns that the later someone is diagnosed, the worse it is for the quality of their life.
According to the National Autistic Society, 70% of autistic adults say they are not getting the help that they need from social services, and at least one in three autistic adults experiences severe mental health difficulties due to a lack of support. Without tailored support, people with autism can find it difficult to communicate their needs and make good use of mainstream health and social care services. This increases the pressure on families and carers and creates pressures within primary care and mental health services as they struggle to meet people’s needs, often when they are undiagnosed or misdiagnosed.
Individuals with the diagnosis, and their families, can feel overwhelmed without help and understanding. The absence of a diagnosis may mean that families are not communicating in the best way or that people are taking medication that is not needed and may be harmful. We already know that people with autism are vulnerable to mental health problems, with late diagnosis increasing this risk, and that 70% have at least one other mental or behavioural disorder, while 40% meet the criteria for two.
One man with autism, Chris, who waited until adulthood for a diagnosis, told the National Autistic Society that in his view before his diagnosis his needs were never met, and at times he felt suicidal. Having a diagnosis helped him to reach a place of acceptance and opened doors that were previously closed to him. He said that without the diagnosis he would have taken his own life.
We know that people with autism are also vulnerable to physical health problems. A recent study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry revealed that people with autism die 16 years earlier on average compared with the general population, and that suicide is the second commonest cause of death for them after cardiovascular disease. One problem with the study was that it was not known how many also had a learning disability, a known risk factor itself for earlier death, for which there is good research evidence.
We know that without proper recognition and diagnosis, children with autism may not be in the appropriate school environment and are at risk of being bullied, leading to isolation, depression and anxiety. Behavioural difficulties, if not properly understood, can put them at risk of being suspended, with profound implications for their future. We know that only 15% of people with autism are in full employment.
Autism, as we have heard, is a multidimensional neurodevelopmental disorder. It presents differently in each person, and diagnosis requires a multidisciplinary team to accurately decode behaviours and observations which may overlap with other conditions. There is no definitive medical or genetic test for autism.
There might be gender differences in how autistic traits present and are interpreted. The stereotype of a person with autism is an obsessional person somewhat locked into themselves; but girls present with more subtle difficulties. While in conversation they might be able to take turns to speak, make eye contact and engage in small talk, but they frequently do not understand the subtext. They tend to be better at social formatting, cutting and pasting someone else’s behaviour and trying to make it their own without understanding why they are doing it. There is no research on the number of women on the autistic spectrum but clinicians now suggest that there are probably a significant number of undiagnosed cases referred to adult mental health services for conditions such as depression, OCD, eating disorder or self-harm. Staff at an eating disorder clinic in Birmingham recently identified that between 60% and 70% of women in their 20s attending their clinic had undiagnosed autism.
A teacher at Limpsfield Grange School in Surrey, a school for girls with special educational needs and communication difficulties, noticed that a high percentage of the learners were showing behaviour on the autistic spectrum. Some of the girls were helped to write a book, M is for Autism, which asks the reader to view the world through the eyes of a girl with autism—for example, not having friends, not fitting in and feeling worried all the time.
Autism also presents differently in adults and children. People are less closely observed after leaving school, and many adults learn to limit their autistic behaviour. They face numerous misdiagnoses and potential iatrogenic harm before getting correctly diagnosed with Asperger’s or autism. There are also issues for older adults, whose autism might come to light at a time when they lose a spouse or in retirement because of their inability to adjust, or behavioural difficulties that present.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists expresses concern that there are insufficient trained staff to carry out a diagnosis. In order to tackle this, it has developed a quicker aid to diagnosis for psychiatrists and a training package. It is looking at how a basic essential knowledge of autism can be added to the training of all psychiatrists to ensure that general psychiatrists have knowledge and skills about autism in their core skillset. On its website, there is good-practice guidance on diagnosis.
Part of the conundrum is that autism has no cure and no single or clear causation. Prevalence is probably going up, and diagnosis certainly increases the number of children and adults identified with autism. Every person with autism is different, but receiving a diagnosis is a crucial step in their journey. For many people, diagnosis leads to better understanding of individuals for their families, as well as for education, health and care services and employers. For many people, diagnosis leads to adjustments in expectations, education and care. For others, more specialist support and long-term interventions are needed. The growing awareness of issues faced by people on the autistic spectrum is welcomed, but there are still too many people whose needs go unrecognised, misdiagnosed and unmet. We have made strides in the right direction, but we need to speed up the process. Will the Minister commit to sharing examples of good practice across England, and encourage areas that are lagging behind to implement it?
Lord Wigley (PC)
My Lords, I will intervene in the gap in 60 seconds flat. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, for her work over many years in this area, and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Rock, on her very moving speech. I declare an interest—technically lapsed—as former joint patron of Autism Cymru, which was brought to an end last year for the simple reason that a new Welsh Government-sponsored strategy was taking over and is very relevant to the issues that we are discussing today.
In talking about these matters as an attendee of several meetings and conferences of Autism Europe, it has become clear to me that there is a great jealousy among many European countries of the initiatives that have been taken in the four nations of the United Kingdom. There is significant envy about these. However, I flag up one warning from our experience in Wales: it is one thing to have a strategy on paper; it is something else to have it rolled out evenly in every community that needs those services. There need to be the resources for the local authority and the medical fraternity in order to do the job. That is what my appeal will be: to make sure that good theoretical policies work out in practice.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to comment for the Opposition in this very important debate, on which I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Browning. She made a very persuasive case for the early diagnosis of autism. She made the point that currently, although we have seen an improvement, there is a huge variation in practice in many parts of the country. I come back to my noble friend Lord Wigley’s comment that it is good to have a strategy but you need to have an implementation programme to ensure that there is consistency across the country. The debate has shown that at the moment there is a postcode lottery and widespread inconsistency in the availability of diagnosis and access to treatment. The principal question for the Minister is what action she can take to ensure that clinical commissioning groups are kept up to the mark and monitored over the issue of diagnosis. The issue of transparency, and the availability of comparative information so that individual CCGs can be monitored and held to account, is crucial in this area.
My noble friend Lord Touhig suggested that a difficulty in getting diagnosis may in essence be a rationing tool, in that if you do not get a diagnosis you do not get access to treatment. If that is the case, that is entirely unacceptable. The same issue applies to access to treatment. If we are to understand the challenges that we face, we have to have local and comparative information about the difficulties of access. I hope that at the very least the Minister will take this away and consider with her colleagues how that might be brought about.
The noble Baroness, Lady Browning, said that we ought to have one single national clinical director to focus solely on autism. I very much agree with that. However, the current set-up of national clinical directors is wholly unsatisfactory. They are given very little time and virtually no support, and it is not fair to ask them to do what they have been asked to. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, mentioned her membership of expert groups. She may well know that NHS England has a consultation, which I think has now finished, on the membership of clinical reference groups, which are crucial groups that advise NHS England on policy development. My understanding is that the proposals that were sent out on 9 February proposed reducing the numbers of those CRGs and their clinical members. That is a matter of great regret and I hope the Minister will be able to comment on it.
Resources have been mentioned. The noble Lord, Lord Prior, said recently in response to an Oral Question about the excellent Mental Health Task Force report that £1 billion per annum will be spent by 2020. The problem is that that is not ring-fenced; it is part of the overall allocation to the NHS. As we know, the NHS is facing very severe financial pressures, and I know no one who believes there is any chance whatever that that £1 billion will actually be spent on mental health services.
I end by referring to the excellent Autistica report that came out last week. It shows that people with autism are more likely to die at a younger age compared with the general population. It makes a strong argument that we need to build the research and knowledge base; that the learning disability mortality review should include a new national autism mortality review; that standardised mortality data about all autistic people should be collected nationally and locally; and that the Department of Health should include preventing premature mortality of autistic people as a key outcome in the 2017-18 deliverables. Will the Minister’s department take very careful note of the Autistica report and perhaps in due course let noble Lords who have taken part in this debate know what the outcome of those considerations might be?
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)
What an excellent debate we have had this afternoon. As is normal, I am going to have to try in a short time to get through answering all the questions, which have been so incredibly interesting. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Browning for raising this important issue. I pay tribute to her many years of support for those who have autism and indeed to the support in the contributions of all our speakers.
Parents can find themselves in a frightening and bewildering place, first, when they sense that there is something wrong with their child and, secondly, once they are given a diagnosis. Autism is particularly bewildering, partly because it can manifest itself in so many various ways. Obviously, as my noble friends Lady Browning and Lady Rock, and the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, said, a timely diagnosis of autism is essential to ensure that the relevant health, care and educational interventions can be implemented for the maximum benefit. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, also mentioned that if there has been an early diagnosis, problems can be sorted out before they become too desperate. It is essential to ensure that families do not spend a long time in limbo, uncertain of how best to support a child or young person. Indeed, the same can be said for staff in schools and other settings. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, mentioned, a diagnosis may make a massive difference for adults if they have struggled through their life without support. As our understanding of autism and its impact has improved, we have become better at early identification and more nuanced approaches to therapeutic interventions.
NICE has recommended that following a referral for a clinical assessment, a person should wait no longer than three months before the assessment process begins. NICE also highlights that given the complexity of autism, this process cannot be rushed. This is a challenge for the NHS and its partners. There is no doubt that in some parts of the country the demand placed on services, often through the sheer weight of numbers, means that they can struggle to meet the standards. NICE guidelines recognise that there is evidence of girls being one of the groups at risk. It is looking into better guidelines on this issue.
I will set out some actions that we are taking centrally to deliver improvements in how the NHS and its partners are able to deliver timely diagnoses. Diagnosis is of course a process which should be driven locally by clinical commissioning groups, working in partnership with their local authorities, to develop the right pathways to assessment and packages of care which result from a diagnosis. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and my noble friend Lady Browning talked about meeting targets and holding CCGs to account. The Department of Health and NHS England, along with the Association of Directors of Social Services, are visiting CCGs and local authorities. These visits aim to develop a better oversight of the challenges in securing timely diagnosis across all ages. They will consider data on waits, which are so essential, and the design of pathways—as a nurse, I really dislike that word, as the noble Baroness does, but I cannot think of a better one to use. They will also consider many of the critical issues raised so that they can make an effective assessment of how information is made available to the public, the links to mental health services and social care services, how initial referrals are triaged, and who provides leadership locally for autism support. NHS England will complete its work in April and then report to the cross-government autism programme board.
Effective commissioning must start with effective identification of needs. The Department of Health issued guidance in 2014 for health and well-being boards on children’s complex needs, including autism, which provides key insights to effective assessments. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, mentioned that there should be specific commissioning for autism to take it away from other learning disabilities. I will write to him further on that but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, suggested, it can be difficult to separate the two when symptoms and behaviours can so often overlap. Quite often with diagnoses, somebody appears with a different kind of symptom than a natural autistic symptom. That can perhaps lead to finding that the child is also on the autistic spectrum, so I am nervous about separating the two.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, spoke about higher education. It is essential that school staff are able to recognise and meet the needs of children on the autistic spectrum. The Department for Education has funded the Autism Education Trust to provide training for early years, school and further education staff across the spectrum of need. To date, the AET has provided training for around 87,000 education staff. I know that the AET is aiming to reach a key milestone of 100,000 trained staff in the summer of this year.
In brief, local authorities and CCGs are required to work together in joint arrangements to assess the needs of individuals and develop education, health and care plans designed to focus on the outcomes that will deliver the biggest impact for the child and their family.
Raising the skills and awareness of the workforce is of course key to diagnosis. The Department of Health has provided financial support to the Royal College of General Practitioners to make sure that there is a priority programme on autism, with practical work on autism awareness and training for GPs. This will enable people who may have autism to be supported more effectively from the start of their assessment process.
Last year, the Department of Health also provided funding to a number of organisations, including the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of General Practitioners and the National Autistic Society, to upgrade their autism e-learning training tools and materials. The department has also funded the development of two e-learning tools which can help people working with autistic children, young people and young adults to provide better services.
As people with autism are susceptible to mental health conditions, it is also worth noting that this Government are driving forward the transformation of children and young people’s mental health services, improving access and making services more widely available across the country. The transformation programme, backed by additional investment of £1.4 billion over the course of this Parliament, will deliver a step change in the way that children and young people’s mental health services are commissioned and delivered.
Also very important is the work done under the auspices of the 2014 Think Autism strategy. There are three key new proposals in the strategy that I think will make a difference. Think Autism community awareness projects will be established in local communities, and there will be pledges and awards for local organisations to work towards. The Autism Innovation Fund provides funding for projects that promote innovation, local services and projects, particularly for low-level preventive support.
The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, mentioned better data collection, and this is indeed very important. There will be more joined-up advice and information relating to services, including a new way for social care staff to record a person’s condition. There is also a commitment to make it easier for people with autism to find information online, including information about how their local authority is performing.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, mentioned finance, which is always at the top of everything. The Government have allocated £4.5 million for the Autism Innovation Fund and the autism community awareness programme. This funding has been announced for one year.
What will make an enormous difference to diagnosis is effective local engagement with parent forums and other groups. That is critical to CCGs being more effective in meeting complex needs locally. They have expertise and experience, and they can interpret and provide a voice for their children.
We have heard today from my noble friend Lady Rock, very emotionally, about the difficulties she had with the diagnosis of her child. We should listen much more to what parents are saying. They know if there is something wrong with their child, and when they go to see a GP they need to feel that that GP is going to listen to them. Parents are often co-ordinating and managing a complex range of services and interventions as part of their caring role. NHS England has undertaken considerable work in this field to promote the value of engaging with parents.
I know I have left out several things that various noble Lords brought up and will make sure that I get back to them on all those issues. The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, asked whether Ministers will work with NHS England to commission an autism register in GP records. It is felt that a register per se is not necessary to their primary care work in supporting people with autism. GP practices already maintain registers for people with learning disabilities under the quality outcomes framework.
Commissioners are now beginning to realise that awareness, diagnosis and support needs to be of a high quality across the country. It is debates such as this today, though it was far too short, that keep autism firmly on the radar. I thank all noble Lords for their participation.
Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction
(8 years, 9 months ago)
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The Earl of Selborne
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress has been made towards implementing the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030.
The Earl of Selborne (Con)
My Lords, it is now a year since the Sendai Framework for Disaster Reduction 2015-2030 was agreed in Japan and later endorsed at the United Nations General Assembly. Therefore, it seems appropriate to table this Question for Short Debate to review how we are doing on our share of the implementation.
The Sendai framework was the first of three landmark agreements made as part of the United Nations’ post-2015 agenda. The other two were the sustainable development goals, finalised in New York in September last year, and the Paris climate change agreement in December. The Sendai framework builds on the legacy created by the Hyogo framework, which embraced the 10 years from 2005 to 2015. This emphasised disaster-risk reduction as a priority within regional, national and local agendas. The Sendai framework gives greater emphasis to the need to address disaster-risk management, to reduce existing vulnerability and to prevent the creation of new risks. In other words, the key message is effective risk management, which will in turn lead to risk reduction.
What Governments around the world are ultimately required to deliver by their citizens can be summarised in very simple terms as the delivery of health, well-being, resilience and security. All these depend on social, physical and natural infrastructures, and we are all critically dependent on these being maintained for the essentials of life. When they fail, whether by reason of, for example, epidemic, flooding, the collapse of a structure or any other such disaster, it is the national Government who will be held to account.
The Sendai framework does not in any way reduce the primary responsibility of each state to reduce disaster risk but recognises that co-ordination and partnership between regions and nations is essential for disaster-risk management. In order to reduce risk, we need to identify and roll out best practice, we need to promote the collection, analysis, management and use of scientific data, and we need to ensure that these data are available to everyone.
The United Kingdom has a lot to offer to the international community in the field of the assessment and management of risk. It is one of the few countries to have a publicly available national risk register, based on a classified national risk assessment, with a strong and deeply embedded civil contingencies secretariat and well-rehearsed disaster prevention and management protocols and procedures.
The Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Mark Walport, in his first annual report published in 2014—that is, before Sendai—said that the United Kingdom should continue to develop the role for innovation, as well as evidence and risk evaluation, in the delivery of resilient infrastructure. He said that the United Kingdom would need further to develop the national risk register as a key part of the debate on national infrastructure and resilience investment. I suspect that our national infrastructure in respect of electricity generation in this country is now looking less fit for its purpose than it was when he wrote that in 2014, with margins between demand and supply now tighter than had been previously predicted. Of course, shortage of electricity would certainly risk disastrous consequences. Can the Minister tell us whether the national risk register has, indeed, been further developed and, if so, how?
Disaster experts are cautious of labelling any disaster a natural disaster, although clearly nature may be the catalyst which sets off a disastrous chain of events. Environmental hazards become disasters as a result of the risks and vulnerabilities that people are exposed to on a daily basis. As a result of technological change, environmental depletion and climate change, the complexity of the risks faced by humanity increases year by year. Policymakers must define an acceptable level of risk. Developed economies typically have regulation in place which is designed to protect their citizens and limit such risks, whether generated by environmental change or man-made disaster. However, this could be at the expense of other parts of the world where regulation may be less appropriate.
Looking back at what is now almost history, the Bhopal gas tragedy in India of 1984 was a notorious such example. The consequence of that disaster was political unrest generated not just by the explosion in the chemical factory but by the failure of the recovery and accountability process. It was such scandalous examples of disaster management that led the United Nations to convene the first world conference on natural disasters in Yokohama in 1994.
Disaster impacts are strongly influenced by such issues as poverty, inequity, poor urban planning and inappropriate land use. The Sendai framework recognises that essential to addressing these issues, which lead to communities’ exposure to risk, is the contribution of science and technology. We are, of course, the leading European country in terms of scientific output and we are rightly proud of our contribution to generating scientific evidence, which will, in turn, underpin risk management. It is through mobilising the expertise residing in our research institutions and commissioning the appropriate research that we can make the greatest contribution to implementing the Sendai agreement.
I commend the initiatives of Public Health England that were listed in the helpful briefing pack produced for this debate by the House of Lords Library. It included a paper from PHE’s global health committee which refers to, among other health disaster issues, its contribution to controlling the outbreak of Ebola in Sierra Leone. I hope that PHE is now adding an assessment of the contribution that UK science should make to the control of the Zika virus.
In answer to a Parliamentary Question from the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, in November, the Minister said that the Government were still assessing the full implications of the Sendai framework for DfID programmes. I wonder whether she is now able to give us any further information on DfID’s response.
I have no doubt that in responding to the Sendai framework we will benefit greatly from our membership of the European Union, which in this respect has a supporting competence. Will the Minister confirm that in addressing this 15 year-old non-binding agreement, which recognises that each state has the primary role in reducing disaster risk, we benefit enormously from close collaboration with our fellow EU members and from the European Union’s supporting competence?
In Europe, over 80% of current disaster losses are caused by weather-related hazards and these are expected to increase in frequency, yet only a minority of the flood risks, for example, can be attributed to climate change. The rest can be attributed to human behaviour, such as building in risk areas. Most so-called natural disasters are nothing of the sort. With effective contingency planning, risk assessment and risk management, we can enhance resilience. Above all, we need to identify clearly and explicitly how our impressive science and technology capacity in the United Kingdom can underpin our contribution to global risk disaster and risk reduction.
Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, a very distinguished chairman of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, on having this debate at an appropriate time, one year after the Sendai framework, which is the result of steady progress over the past 30 years in reducing the impact of natural disasters.
There was a decade of natural disasters from the late 1980s to the 1990s. Then, as the noble Earl implied, there was the Yokohama meeting, which I attended as head of the Met Office, when the technical challenges were outlined. For example, some of the important developments were the advances in warnings for many kinds of disaster. At that time there was tremendous resistance to the sharing of data; some disasters could have been considerably reduced had there been a better exchange. By the time we got to Hyogo, 10 years later, some of this exchange of data was improved but there were also new technologies for the dissemination of data.
In the past few years we have moved on to the question of climate change effects. At the IPCC, in which Dr Murray was involved, there was great progress in understanding how natural disasters can become more severe and frequent with climate change. The Sendai meeting and framework began to focus on the social and governmental role. One of the important points was that this has stimulated much more work in universities and institutions in the UK on social vulnerability and post-disaster resilience. I have a colleague here this afternoon from UCL’s institute, which is a result of this movement.
I emphasise the continuing need to understand natural disasters, predict them and warn about them, realising that we still have a very big task, particularly with earthquakes. When Dr Wahlström came to London before the Sendai meeting, we discussed the question of major challenges to establishing improvements. I think it has generally been accepted in all fields of endeavour, including science and technology, that some of the greatest challenges can be overcome when there are targets—a man on the moon is one example, cancer is another—and meteorology is no exception. It has to be remembered that in the 1990s, textbooks in the United States said that it was impossible to improve the accuracy of forecasting for tropical cyclones, hurricanes or tornados. In fact, a few years later, there was very significant improvement.
There is still considerable uncertainty about earthquakes, which cause some of the greatest problems and really are national disasters—there is nothing that causes such disasters like the natural disturbances in the earth. Research groups in Russia and China and some run by private individuals in the United States are working on that problem, and I find it very disappointing that these most important events, in which tens or hundreds of thousands of people can die, are not mentioned as a target by the Sendai framework. Targets are really important.
The framework is very good at saying how we should use science and technology, but if we had this as a major United Nations goal and used all the technologies—I know about some of those in the defence sector—there could be improvement. All our newspapers today were covering Prince Harry, who is in Nepal supporting the people there following the recent earthquake. These new developments will come from integrating massive computational studies covering areas from the outer atmosphere to the bottom of the ocean and through the layers of the earth. Some of the physical processes are still quite uncertain.
The framework, quite rightly, points out how physical processes and social impacts from natural disasters differ between regions. The framework has some important recommendations about how these goals might be agreed and promoted through a committee of the United Nations natural disaster body or through its science and technology advisory group. I am very pleased to see that this advisory group has specialised groups in the different regions of the world, because one of the things we know is that natural and meteorological events, including pollution, flooding and many others, vary greatly from one region to another. There is much local expertise. I make this perhaps trivial point because many of the computer models used for climate are used the same way all over the world, and people now realise that that may not be the best way to do it.
In the past, the United Nations agencies had strong records in reducing certain risks, such as those in meteorology that I mentioned, but there are other geophysical risks that have had less resources focused on them. I hope that the UNISDR STAG will have the strength to divert resources to the critical areas, one of which remains hydrology and the question of floods. The other important point is about practice in other parts of the world: the Philippines, for example, has the most advanced system in the world, using modern communication methods and online computer modelling to see how floods move through areas and through different houses. Comparing how they are doing it there with, I am afraid to say, some of the ways that we are doing it here in the UK, could offer good examples of exchange from the south to the north.
I believe that the Foreign Office also has a role in co-ordinating UK representation at these agencies, and in that sense it needs to collaborate with the European Union. I continue to think that the proportion of funds devoted to water resources and flooding is too small. Having made these points, I look forward to hearing from the Minister.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, for initiating this extremely timely debate. As he indicated, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction is a 15-year, voluntary, non-binding agreement which recognises that the state has the primary role to reduce disaster risk but that the responsibility should be shared with other stakeholders including local government and the private sector.
Last week, as the noble Earl indicated, was the first anniversary of the framework, which was adopted in 2015 in Japan. Sendai also held the 2016 Symposium for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Future this month.
When I was thinking about this debate this morning, I was listening to Radio 4 and I heard Professor Jim Al-Khalili, presenter of “The Life Scientific”, introduce the environmental scientist Professor Carolyn Roberts. In doing so, he mentioned that barely a month goes by without news of another catastrophic flood somewhere in the world: we had the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, the flooding in New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina a year later, and the typhoon in the Philippines in 2013, with the role of climate change being strongly mooted. Jim also reminded us of the events here this winter when, once again, flood victims were caught in a cycle of despair and anger as they tried to make sense of why their homes were flooded and what could be done to prevent it happening again.
I immediately tuned in to the radio, bearing in mind the potential for the Sendai framework to structure how all communities, both locally and globally—I am sorry for the interruption, but I cannot decide which glasses to wear at the moment. I have a slight problem with cataracts and I am finding it difficult to focus. As I was saying, I tuned in to the radio, bearing in mind the potential for the Sendai framework to structure how all communities, both locally and globally, are able to respond and protect people when disasters occur, and for science and technology to contribute. Professor Roberts applies water science in particular to work out why such events occur and the role that we humans play in them. One thing she mentioned that I thought had huge resonance for today’s debate was her recollection of a local politician, who was responsible for planning policy in a council, asking what a flood-plain was. What this brought home to me—and to her; this is the point she was making—was the importance of bringing a better understanding of science to the public and ensuring that public policy development works hand in hand with scientific progress.
The Sendai framework recommends that national and local government work closely with the private sector in their area across the four priorities for action, benefiting from industry expertise—the examples given in the framework are insurance and risk sharing, as well as lessons in good practice such as resilient building codes, and resilient tourism and the business community.
My noble friend Lord Hunt of Chesterton has stressed how the Sendai framework and its priorities for action have been developed based on the 10-year experience of implementing the Hyogo framework and the ones that went before that. These priorities are key to enabling disaster management agencies to move beyond improved disaster management to address the underlying disaster risks. However, as my noble friend stated, it is also important that government agencies and the research community are encouraged to improve the technologies of prediction and warning, especially where the current methods fail, such as the warnings for earthquakes, as highlighted by my noble friend, and for certain kinds of typhoon, such as that which occurred in the Philippines.
I am also pleased to see that we have here today Professor Virginia Murray, head of extreme events and health protection at Public Health England. I read the extract from her excellent blog in the briefing that we received from the Library in which she illustrated how Public Health England works internationally alongside other Governments and in partnership with organisations such as the WHO, and, of course, collaboratively with DfID. She pointed out that through the Sendai framework Public Health England would be able to build a structured response using a greater level of detail and clarity, and to consider the potential for science and technology to contribute.
My noble friend also mentioned the role of the EU, which has, of course, strongly supported the Sendai framework’s extension of the traditional focus on natural hazards to include man-made hazards and associated environmental, technological and biological hazards, which brings it in line with progress made at a European level in recent years. What contributions have the Government made to the development of the EU action plan on the implementation of the Sendai framework?
As Professor Murray highlighted, the Sendai framework also includes targets to reduce damage to infrastructure and disruption to basic services, including health and education facilities. In recent times we have seen a particular impact in Africa from epidemics and other risks. Some disaster experts have said that the lack of a firm commitment in the agreement to ramp up international aid for risk reduction would undermine poorer countries’ efforts to make progress on the SDGs.
In February a special session on the gender-related dimensions of disaster risk reduction and climate change was convened in Geneva by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. Countries were urged to act on the emphasis that the Sendai framework placed on gender issues. What efforts are the Government making to reflect this and to work with disaster-prone countries to ensure that women are involved in the disaster risk decision-making process and resource management, and to ensure that they have access to social protection measures, education, health and early warnings?
As the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, has already mentioned, in response to a Written Question from the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, last November, the noble Baroness the Minister said that the department remained committed to supporting the most vulnerable countries to better withstand and recover from the impact of disasters. However, she indicated that DfID was still assessing the full implications of the Sendai framework for its programmes.
Disaster risk is costing countries more than $300 billion a year. If disasters strike in developing countries, they can wipe out 20% or more of GDP. Many experts argue that if we want to address sustainable development, disaster risk has to be incorporated in development planning. Evidence shows that Governments are failing to incorporate disaster risk in the planning of their economic development. What measures are the Government taking to address this, and will they highlight the importance of this issue at the next session of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in 2017?
What efforts are the Government making to promote the need to integrate disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation efforts, particularly given that 90% of disasters are now climate-related? Can the Minister indicate what the Government’s current priorities are in the vital area of disaster risk reduction?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for International Development (Baroness Verma) (Con)
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Selborne for securing this debate, and I thank all noble Lords for their excellent contributions. The debate has demonstrated that we did not need lots of speakers—its quality has been excellent. I share the same breakfast listening in the mornings as the noble Lord, Lord Collins. It was a really interesting programme this morning and I listened to it when I was stuck in traffic, trying to get to the department.
I see on a near-daily basis how the lives of poor people are threatened by the effects of disasters. A changing climate, combined with rising populations, urbanisation, environmental degradation, war and conflict, is challenging progress to end extreme poverty and is tipping more people into crisis. We know that early action and work to build the resilience of countries, communities and people can save lives when disaster hits. Indeed, early action and resilience building helps protect livelihoods, safeguards development gains and offers better value for money.
We have had a range of questions. I hope that I will be able to respond to some of them from my notes. I have also taken note of some of the questions that noble Lords asked, but if I fail to respond to any of them today I undertake to write to noble Lords.
Since 2010 we have significantly improved the quality and speed of our humanitarian response. We have prioritised disaster preparedness. In the new UK aid strategy, we identify strengthening resilience and our response to crises as one of our four strategic objectives. We are committed to doing more to strengthen the resilience of poor and fragile countries to disasters, shocks and climate change.
DfID and the Cabinet Office have worked with the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction on developing the Sendai framework. In March of last year my right honourable friend the Minister of State for International Development, Mr Desmond Swayne, spoke at the third UN world conference in Sendai. The framework is coherent with other international processes. It builds international co-operation and global partnerships, strengthens disaster risk governance and takes account of the particular needs of countries that are at risk of conflicts and insecurity as well as natural hazards. It ensures that development investments are disaster-proof.
Over the past five years since the publication of the humanitarian emergency response review, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, my department has focused on building the resilience of poor and vulnerable people to disasters. Here we have seen real leadership. The UK was the first donor country to define and frame disaster resilience, and we have successfully influenced the funding strategies of others. Internally, we have embedded disaster resilience in all our country programmes, integrated resilience in our work on climate change and improved the coherence of our humanitarian and development work.
I have some examples. In Ethiopia we contribute £276 million to a £2.2 billion programme that provides guaranteed employment for more than 8 million people on activities to stop soil erosion and preserve scarce water. This has transformed formerly famine-stricken areas of Ethiopia. El Niño has hit Ethiopia hard, but a combination of this kind of preparedness work and concerted action by the Ethiopian Government and donors has meant that there has been no repeat of the horrific famine of the 1980s.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, mentioned Nepal. Prior to the devastating earthquakes in April and May 2015, the UK was already supporting a five-year programme to build Nepal’s disaster management system. This included measures to strengthen legislation on land use and building codes to retrofit key buildings such as hospitals to withstand earthquakes, to build the capacity of the Government and communities to organise, and to pre-position goods and train people to save lives in the immediate aftermath. So when the earthquake hit, the first relief was distributed within hours. When more relief was needed, the humanitarian staging area that the UK had built with the United Nations at Kathmandu airport helped accelerate the response by approximately three weeks. The experience in Nepal shows how the Sendai framework can be implemented and how it can directly save lives.
The UK is also leading the way in understanding and sharing what works best. The Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters programme, known as BRACED, will help more than 5 million people, especially women and children, cope with the impacts of extreme climate events by creating new coalitions of civil society, government, media, universities and meteorological offices to build community resilience, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, alluded to in his opening remarks. Lessons from this will be used to improve local and national policies and build institutional knowledge.
But we know that timely responses depend on finances also being in place well before disasters strike. Here, the UK has a strong story to tell, with the Africa Risk Capacity programme using modern finance mechanisms to enable African Governments to obtain natural disaster insurance, reducing the losses incurred by extreme weather events and natural disasters, and helping protect livelihoods. After the poor rains in late 2014, the system paid out £18 million to Senegal, Mauritania and Niger, providing food for 1.3 million people and fodder for nearly 600,000 livestock.
Before I conclude, I will respond to some of the questions asked by noble Lords. My noble friend Lord Selborne asked about the national risk register. He rightly drew attention to the importance of the role that that plays in the discussion on national infrastructure and resilience investment. The national risk register and the national risk assessment are based on, and rooted in, scientific evidence. The Government Office for Science and the broad range of stakeholders that it represents are important partners in delivering a rigorous and evidence-based assessment of the hazards and threats faced by the UK.
My noble friend also asked about DfID building resilience to pandemics such as Ebola. The UK led the international response to the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone, and we have committed £427 million. The response brought together 10 government departments and four other non-public bodies, along with non-governmental organisations and charities. While huge challenges remain to help Sierra Leone rebuild its economy, the rapid and flexible cross-government UK action helped to save several thousand lives and put a halt to the outbreak of the disease spreading further. We must also pay great tribute to the people of Sierra Leone themselves, who were on the ground working very closely with UK personnel.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, mentioned targets and earthquakes. Sendai is designed as a broad framework with guiding principles and priorities for action and increased strengthening of the role of the Science Advisory Group. Our expertise has long played a strong role and will continue to do so, but it is important to ensure that all forms of disaster are covered. We also need to make sure that we work with partners so that they will also be able to strengthen their systems.
The noble Lord, Lord Collins, mentioned gender, and how we are supporting and protecting women and girls in disasters. As the noble Lord is aware, it is a subject very close to my own heart and very much at the centre of all the programmes that DfID is working in. We know that data are limited and that there is evidence that more women are likely to die after a disaster than men. Similarly, child sexual abuse has historically increased after emergencies, perhaps just because of the breakdown of social structures. The risks to survival of transactional sex are high, and the needs of women and girls are often overlooked during humanitarian crises. It is really important not only that we are only constantly mindful of that ourselves but that we remind donor partners with which we work and the countries in which we work that we should not overlook those challenging needs that particularly face women and girls. We are in a unique position, with both humanitarian operations and long-term development programmes, to address the immediate needs of survivors of disasters and those who are prey to sexual violence in emergencies. Ultimately, we need to tackle the underlying root causes of abuse so that gender inequality and discrimination are eradicated.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, asked about funding. As he is aware, we have scaled up our support to meet our share of the developed countries’ commitment to provide $100 billion towards climate change activities. That is an increase of 50%, so our own contribution is $5.8 billion.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I hope that our response is comprehensive so that it takes into account all the issues that the noble Lord and indeed all of us should be concerned about on the effects of climate change. I am pretty certain that we will talk to colleagues to get a more detailed answer around the issue of water. While I was a Minister at DECC it was very much part of the wider debate, so I am pretty certain that it is not an overlooked subject matter.
Funding for work in response to climate change, for meeting our commitments and to meet other donors is done through the International Climate Fund. We work with our colleagues at DECC and Defra to make sure that not only do we reduce poverty and provide clean energy but we make sure that we are part of the economic growth agenda. Disaster financing should focus on the vulnerable, the poorest and those furthest away from help. It is likely that, while we are looking at development issues, we need to constantly make sure that humanitarian finance, which is currently under massive strain, is not overlooked and keeps pace with the rising need. Consequently, there is a need for Governments, businesses and individuals to build resilience against these disaster risks and develop rigorous disaster risk management strategies. Plans for risk financing, including insurance, should be an integral part of that.
I think I have run out of time, but I conclude by saying that the UK will meet its commitments under the new UK ODA strategy to strengthen resilience and our response to crises. The world humanitarian summit in May is a once-in-a-generation moment for the UK to showcase its experience and change the way that we work in the poorest and most fragile countries. As we come together to agree new ways of working to save lives and reduce hardship around the globe, the UK will play its role in making the summit a success. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Selborne, who reminds us of the work being done but also reminds us not to take our foot off the pedal in making sure that, as a lead development partner, we press other donors to implement and carry out their responsibilities, as the UK so successfully does.
House of Lords
Health and Social Care: Funding
Lord Taverne
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to introduce measures to convert National Insurance contributions into a special tax for funding health and social care.
Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)
My Lords, the Government do not have any plans to convert national insurance contributions into a special tax for funding health and social care. As noble Lords will know, a fixed proportion of each class of NIC receipts from employees, the self-employed and employers is already allocated directly to the NHS. This adds up to broadly 20% of NIC receipts. The rest of NHS funding comes from general taxation.
Lord Taverne (LD)
My Lords, the National Health Service is facing an existential crisis that is probably as serious as any it has faced. The root cause is well known: namely, that spending on health and social security rises much faster than GDP. At the same time, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, spending on social care and the health service is set to decline instead of increasing as a proportion of GDP in the next five years. Do the Government not recognise that the answer is a change in funding? NICs are now in effect a regressive and inefficient tax on jobs. Only part of the money goes to the NHS and the rest goes into a general tax pool, as the Minister has conceded. If the Government do not accept this, will the Minister make representations to his colleagues in the Department of Health to meet a small group, representing a larger group of cross-party experts who have come to the conclusion that to save the health service now means a new Beveridge?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, there is quite a lot in that Question. To start with, according to the OECD figures, the percentage of our GDP in the past three years has been flat at 8.5%. I accept that over time, as our GDP increases, there is a chance that if the expenditure stays the same, the percentage will reduce. As noble Lords know, under the five-year forward view, we will have spent an extra £10 billion a year by the end of the Parliament. As far as having a delegation to talk about a future strategy on funding the NHS is concerned, I would be delighted to commit the Health Minister to meeting the noble Lord, but I cannot really do that. I will certainly make his views known and ask the Minister if he would meet the delegation.
Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister accept that the percentage of GDP that the United Kingdom spends on health is much lower than that of comparable countries and that therefore the crisis in the National Health Service needs addressing? Is he aware that, against this crisis background, the Government are asking for a further £22 billion in efficiency savings and yet 53% of hospital trusts say that it will prove impossible to meet the caps on agency staff? We are facing a crisis and the Government are unprepared to face up to it.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, on the OECD figures, the United Kingdom’s spending is slightly below the OECD average, but it all depends on the denominator and that depends on how high GDP is. However, it is not, as the noble Lord puts it, a lot lower; it is slightly below average for the OECD. On the £22 billion of savings, that was the NHS’s own plan. The Chancellor accepted that and agreed to fund it and in fact produced an extra £2 billion this year as a down payment.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
My Lords, will the Minister ask the Chancellor, who is always looking for innovative ideas, to consider the possibility of donations to the health service, which could be tax deductible? There might be a lot of people willing to give perhaps even large sums to the National Health Service. It would be a win-win situation.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
I am sure that the Chancellor is always looking for good ideas. However, by the end of 2020, we will be spending £120 billion on the NHS, so the donations would have to be pretty big.
Lord Kinnock (Lab)
My Lords, health funding is in crisis and expenditure on adult social care has gone down as a proportion of GDP by 19% since 2010, which accounts for part of the crisis in health provision. Would it not be possible to consider that a direct connection between tax contributions and the quantity and quality of health and social care provision would enhance public understanding, improve transparency and probably management, and potentially generate additional buoyancy for funding for these vital services?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
I take issue with the noble Lord’s figures. In 2010, the percentage according to OECD figures of GDP was 8.6% and in 2013 it was 8.5%. As far as the hypothecation of taxes is concerned, it is generally an established principle that we do not like doing that because it restricts flexibility. Ultimately, the taxpayer has to pay for the NHS and I agree with the noble Lord that taxpayers are prepared and want to pay for the NHS. They think that it is worth while—we all do. But we do not agree with hypothecating taxes beyond the fact that, as I said in my first Answer, 20% of NIC does go to the NHS.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, my right honourable colleague, the Member of Parliament for North Norfolk, Norman Lamb, has called for a cross-party commission to take a long-term view on the funding needed both for the National Health Service and for social care. As far as I understand, he has not yet had a response from the Government on his call for that completely cross-party, non-political commission. Will the Government reply on that today?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
As far I am aware, the right honourable Norman Lamb has a Private Member’s Bill in the House of Commons, where these issues can be fully debated. Obviously, I cannot give an answer to him today.
Aviation: Sustainable Fuel
(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Soley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what policies are in place to encourage the development of sustainable aviation fuels in the United Kingdom and what new proposals they are considering.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, the Government are assessing the benefits of making aviation biofuels eligible for the incentives that currently apply to biofuels used in road transport through the renewable transport fuel obligation. We aim to publish a consultation on legislative amendments to this scheme later this year, including proposals for aviation biofuels.
Lord Soley (Lab)
That is a useful statement and a step in the right direction, but is the Minister aware that we are still the largest and most advanced aviation producer in the world, except on sustainable fuels, where we have fallen seriously behind competitors in Europe, North America and Asia? What will the Government do to improve R&D on sustainable aviation fuels and will they please make sure that they include it in the renewable transport fuel obligation?
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, as I mentioned in my Answer, we will be going out to consultation on this subject later this year, where we will look at increased targets for suppliers to provide long-term certainty to industry and to meet our climate change targets. We will also make biofuels more sustainable by increasing the supply of waste-based biofuels. We will also support investment in renewable aviation fuels by including it in the RTFO. We will also look at possible further competitions on top of the one already held, looking specifically at the jet biofuel issue.
Lord Spicer (Con)
My Lords, it sounds as if these excellent new fuels will be polluting our airports rather less in future, so can we bring forward the Heathrow decision?
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Ahmad answered this question at great length last week or the week before. I do not think that there is anything more that I can add to it.
Viscount Slim (CB)
My Lords, I declare that some years ago I was the vice-chairman of the Air League. The Minister may wonder why, but the Air League has been going for many years. It was started by soldiers, not the light blue. We had certain very tough talks with the Government of the day on the taxing and pricing of aviation fuel. The Government of the day gave certain commitments, which I hope still stand. I say to the Minister on the very pertinent Question that the noble Lord, Lord Soley, raised that, if the taxes go up, everybody’s air ticket becomes more expensive.
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, the noble Viscount raises an interesting point. To be perfectly honest, I am not aware of the answer, but if there is anything else that I can add I will write to him.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
In reply to a question asked in the Commons in January on the warnings from those involved in aviation that inaction and lack of clear policy direction from the Government were holding back research and development into, and the use of, renewable fuels in aviation compared with other countries, the Commons Minister said that,
“there is more than one way of killing a cat. Yes, alternative fuels may have an important role to play, but more importantly … a market-based mechanism will allow other types of technology to be developed which can then be used to offset the emissions from aviation, which will always be dependent on liquid fuels”.—[Official Report, Commons, 28/1/16; col. 397.]
Does not that statement of policy, contrary to what has been implied today, indicate quite clearly that the Government are, in reality, giving the aviation industry a double whammy: dithering over policy on the development and use of renewable fuels in aviation, as well as still dithering over airport expansion in the south-east?
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, of course I would not agree with the noble Lord, as no doubt the House would acknowledge. Sadly, the British Airways Solena project has not progressed, though it is still live and discussions are ongoing between Ministers and British Airways on this issue. As I said earlier, three projects won the advanced biofuels demonstration competition, dividing up a fund of £25 million. One is in Swindon, producing methane for HGV vehicles. The noble Lord is right that we want to look further at the problems relating to aviation fuel. Unfortunately, in the initial competition, there was only one application from an aviation fuel project. I hope there will be another competition in the near future which will include some more.
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)
My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt. It is actually the turn of the Liberal Democrats, as we have not heard from them yet on this Question.
Baroness Randerson
Does the Minister accept that we need to work with international partners in order to develop the use of sustainable aviation fuels? Does he accept the importance of the European Union as one of our international partners, so it is important for us to remain a member of the European Union?
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, the noble Baroness is right in so far as we have to look globally at the whole issue, including what is happening in the European Union. As the noble Baroness will no doubt be aware, we have been working with the International Civil Aviation Organization. In February, we reached agreement with other states in the ICAO on a global CO2 standard for aircraft, which is all part of the same picture. All new aeroplane designs applying for certification from 2020 will have to be compliant with the CO2 emissions standard. Designs already in production will also need to comply from 2023.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, when will the consultation be concluded and when will the Government implement it?
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, as I said earlier, the consultation will start later this year. I do not have any information on when it will conclude but I have read out the areas that we shall be looking at. Of course, I will write to the noble Lord if there is any more information that I can give him.
Lord Rotherwick
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that producing sustainable fuels with high levels of ethanol is not the problem? General aviation has a problem with combustion engines, which do not deal well with high levels of ethanol in the fuel, as the hoses, the filters and the seals are incompatible with these high levels.
The Earl of Courtown
My noble friend is a lot more expert on hoses, seals and other aspects of aircraft engines. He makes some good points and I am sorry that I cannot comment any further.
Local Authorities: Budget
Lord Greaves
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the levels of service provision and council tax following local authority budget decisions for 2016–17.
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I remind the House of my interest as a local councillor.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, the Government believe that local authorities, as democratically elected bodies, are best placed to determine the right service provision for the needs of their particular area. We have given them important new flexibilities to enable them to continue to do this in the most cost-effective way. Local authority council tax decisions are published annually as official statistics. The date for the 2016-17 council tax statistical release is 31 March.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, on 8 February, the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, told me that, if all authorities took advantage of the flexibilities which the Minister has just mentioned, the expected average local council tax increase this year would be 3.7%. Are the Government not concerned that the round of council tax decisions by local authorities this year will produce increases far above the rate of inflation and the growth in wages? At the same time, there are continuous cuts in local government services. Is it not the case that these are all due to the continuing reductions in local government funding by the Government?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, first, we acknowledge the important role of councils, including Pendle, which deliver the services on which our local communities depend. However, I take issue with the noble Lord because council tax has fallen in real terms by 11% since 2010 and councils have worked particularly hard over the past five years to deliver a better deal for local taxpayers and have coped well with reductions by reforming the way they work to become more efficient in both back-office functions and front-line delivery service.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that the SNP has reneged on its promise to abolish the council tax, but instead Kezia Dugdale, the leader of Scottish Labour, has indicated that a Labour Government in Scotland would introduce a more progressive property tax? Is this not something that the Conservative Government should look at for England?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
No, we are not in that position. The Question focuses very much on England and Wales. There are lots of opportunities for councils to make savings, particularly when working with other councils or public sector bodies. We have announced plans to reform the local government pension scheme but there are certainly other areas such as procurement, counterfraud and digital where we can make progress.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, Wiltshire council became a county unitary in 2009. Since then, we have saved £25 million every year in efficiencies from that move. We have used that money to keep council tax down in a difficult time through a recession but have also protected the services which people in Wiltshire consider are important, including investing in others. If that model was replicated across the country, it is estimated that it would save £2.8 billion a year. Does the Minister agree that the Government should now seriously look at implementing this county unitary model across the country?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
We are ready to promote and facilitate local government reorganisation but only where areas want this. I am aware of my noble friend’s experience in successfully leading Wiltshire. This is an example of what can be achieved for local people where local government moves to a straightforward unitary structure with clear accountability and strong leadership which is sensitive to local needs. Again, the focus will be on—and has been in Wiltshire—the efficiency of service delivery.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, recently the Campaign for Better Transport has estimated that local authority subsidies for rural bus services are likely to be cut this year alone by £27 million. In Hertfordshire, where I live and work, there have been cuts since 2010 of 62%. Forty rural bus services have seen radical declines and 14 have gone altogether. While I recognise some of the things the Government are doing, not least the serious increase in the rural services delivery grant, will the Minister tell your Lordships’ House the long-term plans of Her Majesty’s Government to engage with local authorities to ensure that we have proper rural transport as one of the essential elements of rural sustainability?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
The entire point of our devolution revolution is that all authorities will have the power to set their own policy agendas and target their spending priorities to match. Local leaders know best what is right for them and we think it is right that Whitehall does not predict exactly what the cost of a local service will be, including the bus service. But by 2020, when councils will be 100% funded by council tax, business rates and other local revenues, they will finally be fully accountable to their electorate and not to Whitehall. This is devolution.
Baroness Wall of New Barnet (Lab)
My Lords, I am sure the noble Viscount is aware that the services cut by local authorities include social care, which, as my noble friend Lord Kinnock referred to in an earlier Question, means a massive increase in the number of people coming to hospitals. Does the noble Viscount consider that that is fair and that it is the right way for a Government who care about the health service to behave?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
The noble Baroness will know that the 2% adult social care precept will raise up to £2 billion by 2019-20, with a further £1.5 billion available to councils to work with the NHS to ensure that care is available for older people following hospital treatment, through the better care fund.
Lord Tebbit (Con)
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that those of us who have the privilege of living in East Anglia, particularly those of us who live in Bury St Edmunds, where we have an excellent council which has improved services overall and kept rates well under control, do not need an elected mayor? That will only raise costs, introduce another layer of government and lead to further escalation of these problems.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
That may be so, but I reiterate that we think it is right for the local area to decide these matters.
Schools: Funding
(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Eaton
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how much funding per pupil with the same needs can vary by school; and what they intend to do to achieve fairness in funding.
Lord Borwick (Con)
My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Eaton, and with her permission, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in her name on the Order Paper.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, the current schools funding system is not fit for purpose. A secondary pupil with low prior attainment would attract over £2,200 of additional funding in Birmingham, compared with £36 in Darlington. The Government are committed to addressing this unfairness by introducing a national funding formula from 2017, based on pupils’ needs rather than purely historic calculations. Fairer funding will mean that every pupil, whatever their background and wherever they live, can achieve to the best of their potential.
Lord Borwick
My Lords, how many different local authority funding regimes are there at present? How many basic funding streams will be present after this change? May I also take this opportunity to wish my noble friend a happy birthday today?
Lord Nash
I am grateful to my noble friend for his good wishes. As local authorities are currently responsible for setting their own funding formula for schools, there are 152 varying local funding formulae. We are currently consulting on our proposals to introduce one single national formula for schools. From 2019, funding will be allocated directly to schools on the basis of that formula. This means that, for example, a secondary school pupil with lower prior attainment will attract the same amount of additional funding wherever they are in the country.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister accept that deprivation and need must be part of fairness?
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister also share my concern about services for under-fives, which I know he has come across, where specialist services are funded by local authorities at their whim? I hope that when he is reviewing the schools programme he will also look at under-five services and ensure that they get an equal proportion of funding.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, will the Minister share his initial thoughts on the weighting for each of the fair funding criteria, which are outlined in the government consultation, so we can understand his definition of “fair”?
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, without suggesting that the current funding formula is beyond improvement, the proposed national formula is another example of the Government’s centralist mindset. It is not the latest because, since this was announced, we have also had the White Paper on academisation. However, the national funding formula proposes to remove from head teachers the ability to have any say in the distribution of funding within their local area. Why does the Minister believe that civil servants are better placed, and know more, than head teachers about the funding needs of each area of the country?
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, the Government’s announcement of a national funding formula, and its implementation in my own county of Cambridgeshire, is extremely welcome. Following the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s announcement in the Budget last week of an additional £500 million to support the introduction of the national funding formula, can my noble friend give an indication of how quickly the transition from the present situation to meeting the target allocations in each part of the country will be achieved?
Lord Nash
We will introduce the national funding formula for schools in high need from 2017-18 but the length of time it will take for all schools to reach their formula will be considered in the second stage of the consultation. We want areas that appear to be underfunded—I am aware that that is the case in Cambridge—to have their funding improved as quickly as possible, but also to move at a pace that is manageable for all schools.
Lord Kinnock (Lab)
My Lords, what contribution to fair funding will be made by forcing all schools to become academies, whether they want to or not, and getting rid of parent governors?
Lord Nash
The answer to the first point is that the contribution will be massive efficiency savings as schools collaborating in groups will be able to hire much higher calibre financial people and make purchasing savings. We are not getting rid of parent governors; we are merely saying that governors do not have to be parents. Schools can have as many parent governors as they need. We will also ensure that schools engage with parents on a much more consistent and effective basis than having the odd parent governor if they want it.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, will my noble friend confirm that the historic underfunding of counties such as North Yorkshire will be rectified by having regard to rural depravity, isolation and rurality factors?
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, need and deprivation—I think that that is what the noble Baroness meant—are going to be at the core of the new system. Will the Minister give us an assurance now that in, say, four years’ time, when we look back at how this new formula has been applied, it will not simply have benefited Conservative-controlled areas?
Lord Nash
I can give the noble Lord that assurance. It is quite clear that the formula will benefit many areas that are Labour controlled, and it is being driven entirely on the basis that we have a level playing field for all pupils so that we can deliver educational excellence everywhere.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister think that the very high salaries paid in some instances to the heads of academy chains—some are reportedly paid three times as much as the Prime Minister—is a good use of public funds?
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, from the dubious areas of Yorkshire to the elevated areas of Lincolnshire, surely all schools can benefit from having parent governors. Can my noble friend be a little more encouraging than he was in his answer on that subject?
Lord Nash
I entirely agree with my noble friend that all schools can benefit from that, but we are trying very hard to focus governance on skills, so that people must have the relevant skills. But they may represent all sorts of different groups, and parent governors have a great deal to contribute.
Liaison Committee
The Chairman of Committees
That the Report from the Committee New investigative committee activity (3rd Report, HL Paper 113) be agreed to.
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Laming)
My Lords, with the leave of the House I beg to move that the third report of the Liaison Committee be agreed to. I can honestly say that I am delighted to be moving this Motion because I am very grateful indeed to all the Members of the House who worked hard to put forward their proposals for ad hoc committees in the next Session. Once again, this has been a very worthwhile exercise and the Liaison Committee has had an excellent range of topics to choose from.
I also take this opportunity to offer my warmest thanks to the members of the Liaison Committee for the constructive and thoughtful way in which they approached the task of first shortlisting and then selecting the proposals to recommend to the House. Sadly, it is of course not possible to avoid disappointing some of our colleagues, but the good news is that they can, if they wish, make proposals in future years. In the mean time, I hope that the House will agree that the committee’s recommendations cover a wide range of subjects, which will make excellent use of the talents of the Members of this House, which we are so fortunate to have.
The committee unanimously agreed the following proposals: first, an ad hoc committee on the long-term sustainability of the National Health Service; secondly, an ad hoc committee on sustaining the charity sector and the challenges of governance; and, thirdly, an ad hoc committee on financial exclusion and access to mainstream financial services. We agreed also to recommend an ad hoc post-legislative scrutiny committee to consider the Licensing Act 2003, which colleagues will recall covers a wide range of important matters.
I believe that it is widely acknowledged that Select Committee activity is one of the greatest strengths of this House. The expansion of this activity in the 2010-15 Parliament, with the growth in the number of ad hoc committees from one each Session to three, together with the introduction of a post-legislative scrutiny committee, have been very productive. Your Lordships will also remember that the committee agreed to establish an international relations committee at the start of the next Session, and the report mentions some safeguards in relation to the work of that committee.
I end on the note of thanks with which I began. Both the process that led to the committee’s report and the agreeing of it have been a delight. I commend the report to the House. I beg to move.
Lord Tyler (LD)
My Lords, I am sure that the House will warmly welcome the committee’s recommendations, but perhaps the Chairman could take this opportunity to explain to the House just how items get on the agenda of the Liaison Committee. For example, I think that he will be aware that there is a common view that the proposals in the Strathclyde report may well best be answered by a Joint Committee of both Houses, because they matter for both Houses of Parliament. Is that a matter for which the Liaison Committee could take responsibility?
The Chairman of Committees
My Lords, the position is very clear. Everybody has an equal opportunity. Every Member of the House has the opportunity to put forward topics for discussion. As the report indicates, we had a large number and a wide range of topics. We considered each and every one most carefully. That, I am sure, will continue to be the way in which the system works in future.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, I understand that the gathering of signatures in support of applications to the Liaison Committee for particular ad hoc inquiries does not go down very well with the committee. Why not? If 100 Members of this House decide that they want a particular ad hoc committee to be set up, why should the committee then select some item that is perhaps supported by a very few, simply because a majority of the committee at any one time just fancied that subject? This happened when I put in an application for a further inquiry into identity cards. I was supported by a lot of colleagues, who wrote to me, who knew about the application, but I understand that it had minimal support within the committee. We need to find a way of more accurately reflecting what a large number of people in the House might wish to support.
The Chairman of Committees
My Lords, the committee considered the range of options that were put to us. There was a common theme on some topics; others were more individual. We considered each of them on their merits and we have reached the conclusion that we now commend to the House.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)
My Lords, I have been able to give brief and informal notice to the Chairman of Committees of my intention to query the wisdom of the selection of our new ad hoc committees. Let me say again, and in agreement with the noble Lord, that the findings of your Lordships’ ad hoc Select Committees are one of the most valuable contributions of your Lordships’ House to British public life. The experience and knowledge that resides in your Lordships is perhaps unsurpassed by that in any other community in the United Kingdom.
However, at least three of the four selected ad hoc committees, if not all of them, fall into a rather similar category of inquiry, which one could loosely describe as social science. This appears to be at the expense of other important topics. I do not have time to go into all of them, but there is the hugely important and possibly catastrophic subject of antimicrobial resistance, proposed by the former Secretary of State the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. There is better regulation as proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, which would have gone to the heart of our democracy and how it is working or, rather, how it is not working, with the resultant disillusion among the voting public.
Above all, I would single out the problem of Islamism and the spread of Sharia law in this country, so forcefully and tragically brought home to us yet again this morning in Brussels. I submit that it is wrong of our Liaison Committee not to have picked one of the three proposals to examine this perhaps greatest threat to our present culture. We could, for instance, have had an inquiry proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, on global jihadist movements and the international fight against terrorism. There was a proposal from the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, for an inquiry into our Prevent strategy, whether it is working and, if not, what perhaps can be done about it. Perhaps most simple of all, we could have had from the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, a committee to examine the spread of Sharia law in communities in the United Kingdom and to assess its social consequences. I feel that the noble Lord and his committee owe the House something more of an explanation as to why these and other committee inquiries were not chosen from the very large number of suggestions that were put forward.
Noble Lords would of course be disappointed if against this background I did not once again protest at the fact that we have no fewer than seven committees looking into our relationship with the European Union, in the form of one main committee and six sub-committees. I know that Europhile noble Lords will say that these committees are hugely valuable and that the reports that they produce are treated with awe and admiration in the corridors of Brussels, but I have to say that I see no evidence of this. In fact, if we take even the influence of the British Government in the deliberations of the Council of Ministers, we can see that since 1996 the Government have opposed 55 legislative measures in the Council of Ministers and were defeated on every single one of them. If the Government have such little influence in Brussels, I would have thought that the reports of your Lordships’ Select Committees have even less. Even if they do have influence, can it be right for us to fund seven of these committees when all these other subjects need to be looked at by your Lordships with the wisdom and authority that our committees bring to bear on every subject that they address?
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, perhaps I may say a few words, since my name has been mentioned. Indeed, I have received a commendation from a rather unexpected quarter—I am not sure that it is all that welcome, but it is interesting. The topic mentioned by the noble Lord that I put forward was one of six that I suggested, none of which was accepted by the committee—and I am a member of that committee. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Laming. The members of the committee are all constructive and thoughtful and I go along completely with committee’s recommendations. The noble Lord, Lord Laming, conducted the discussion exceptionally well. He allowed full consideration of all aspects. There was no dissent. It was perhaps one of the most constructive ways of coming to a consensus that I have ever experienced in any committee in this House. I hope that the House will accept the recommendations of the noble Lord, Lord Laming.
The Chairman of Committees
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes. The fact that he made a number of recommendations and none was accepted is an indication of the thoughtfulness of the committee and the way matters were approached. We were not intimidated by his presence.
The noble Lord, Lord Pearson, does the committee a great service because he illustrates that we received a range of serious topics and each was very carefully considered. I would not wish in any way to give the impression that the committee thought that some of the topics that have not been recommended today were not worthy matters. That was not the case. The committee took the matters very seriously.
I may be able to give the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, some comfort in that the House has agreed to look again at the committee structure in 2017-18 and it may be that there will be opportunities then to look at some of the matters that he has raised. Although I have never had the privilege of serving on the EU Committee or its sub-committees, I have received consistently good reports about their work and the impact that they have, not only in this country but in Europe and beyond. I hope very much, that said, that noble Lords will be willing to accept this report. I beg to move.
Riot Compensation Bill
Lord Scott of Foscote (CB)
My Lords, I apologise for raising a point on the Bill at such a late stage. In justification, I read the Bill for the first time this morning. Clause 8(1) states:
“If the decision-maker decides that a claim is valid, the decision-maker must then decide the amount of compensation, up to a maximum of £1 million per claim (the ‘compensation cap’)”.
However, Clause 8(9) states:
“The Secretary of State may by regulations change the amount of the compensation cap for the time being specified in subsection (1)”.
So regulations can change the amount of the cap. That plainly leaves it open to the Secretary of State to increase the cap or reduce it, as the case may be. What troubles me a little is that a possible reduction in the cap might make difficulties in relation to claims for compensation that have not come to fruition, are still in the pipeline and undecided. Would a reduction in the compensation cap affect such claims? I raised this point with the noble Lord, Lord Bates, to whom I am grateful for his assistance, and the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, the sponsor of the Bill.
The consequence has been that the Minister has had a discussion with Home Office legal advisers, and four points have been made, which I think should be placed on the record, because they will be of assistance in construing this Bill and deciding what effect it should have.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)
My Lords, there is a Motion before the House that this Bill should now pass. This is a formality of the House and I do not believe that there is a substantive case from the noble and learned Lord, who said that he only read the Bill this morning, when it has been before the House and has been properly dealt with by it, or that he should be intervening in this way. I propose that the House consider the Motion that is before it.
Access to Medical Treatments (Innovation) Bill
Housing and Planning Bill
Baroness Andrews
“The purpose of planning
(1) Part 2 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 is amended as follows.(2) Before section 13 (survey of area) insert—“12A The purpose of planning(1) The purpose of planning is the achievement of long-term sustainable development and place making.(2) In this Act “sustainable development and place making” means managing the use, development and protection of land and natural resources in a way which enables people and communities to provide for their legitimate social, economic and cultural well-being while sustaining the potential of future generations to meet their own needs.(3) In achieving sustainable development and place making the local planning authority should—(a) positively identify suitable land for development in line with the economic, social and environmental objectives so as to improve the quality of life, well-being and health of people and the community;(b) contribute to the sustainable economic development of the community;(c) contribute to the vibrant cultural and artistic development of the community;(d) protect and enhance the historic environment;(e) positively promote the enhancement and protection of biodiversity so as to achieve a net benefit for nature;(f) contribute to the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change in line with the objectives of the Climate Change Act 2008;(g) positively promote high quality and inclusive design that meets the needs of the maximum number of people, including disabled and older people;(h) ensure that decision-making is open, transparent, participative and accountable; and(i) ensure, whenever possible, that assets arising from the development process are managed for the long-term interest of the community.””
Baroness Andrews (Lab)
My Lords, before I launch into my new clause, I am sure that the whole House will have noticed that we are missing the congenial figure of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, on our Front Benches. I am sure that the other Front Benches would like to join us in sending him every best wish for a speedy recovery. He was taken ill last night.
Before we move on to dissect the planning Bill in all its glory, I am proposing a new clause, which I hope will bring great spirit and a brighter vision for the Minister about what planning can achieve. The new clause also draws on the recent report of the National Policy for the Built Environment Committee. We have just heard an interesting discussion on the role of the committee and the report was an excellent example of a very thoughtful appreciation of a very complex topic. Our findings, which are based on extensive evidence of how, with the talent and vision we already have among our planners, architects and engineers, we can make better places for the future. That is reflected in my new clause, which sets out the terms of what is possible, with the need to reassert the fundamental and public purpose of planning itself—something that I am afraid we have lost sight of.
Planning is about making places and shaping the future of communities. Therefore, it has a profound impact on our lives in many different ways. Obviously, it includes housebuilding, but it is not exclusively about that; it can determine whether communities thrive or not and whether the future is safe, whether it is healthy or harmful and whether that community is productive or idle. Of all the public services that we have, it is the longest term. The proposed new clause would put in the Bill a positive statement of the public purposes and benefit of planning.
In 1947, the Town and Country Planning Act took its place alongside the National Health Service Act, the Education Act and the National Insurance Act as the foundation of what was intended to be a new, prosperous and socially just society. Without the 1947 Act, London and Brighton would have converged into a huge, ghastly conglomerate. Somewhat immodestly, I suggest that my new clause is in that tradition. What is significant about it—it is unique in my experience—is that it is supported by a host of organisations which look after different aspects of community interest, such as Age Concern, Friends of the Earth, TCPA and Aspire. These organisations know what a difference a good place can make; they share the concerns on this side of the House that the changes in this part of the Bill will make high-quality, accessible, sustainable outcomes more difficult to achieve in the anticipated new developments.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I have not spoken previously in Committee, but I took part in the Select Committee process and helped to produce the report Building Better Places. I support the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, in this amendment because to a very great degree it reflects many of the conclusions of the Select Committee. It is important that as the Housing and Planning Bill goes through this House it reflects a number of the conclusions of that report. The amendment takes quite a number of those issues in a very comprehensive way and puts them in this new clause.
I pay tribute to the noble Baronesses, Lady Andrews and Lady Whitaker, who were, in a sense, the prime movers behind the setting up of the Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment, and, of course, to the chair, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, who helped drive the report through. The essence of this amendment is that the National Planning Policy Framework guidance is essentially rather weak about placing a duty on sustainable development, and that is what the committee heavily identified.
This amendment has formidable support across the country. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, read out a few of the names, but it is extremely comprehensive. The supporters’ view, which I entirely endorse, is that planning plays a key role in shaping decisions for the wider built environment as well as in individual buildings and development. They share a concern that current reforms will make high-quality, accessible, sustainable outcomes harder to achieve. This is partly because the NPPF fails to recognise the long-term social and economic benefits of many planning interventions from accessible design standards to green infrastructure and from biodiversity to adequate play space for children. The committee found that the evidence was overwhelming on health, inclusion, climate and economic efficiency and that good planning creates well-being and lower long-term costs to the public purse. The essence of the report was the Committee’s statement:
“Moves towards deregulation of the planning system, coupled with an intensification of housebuilding, have the potential to exert significant enduring impacts upon the built environment in England. A consistent theme across much of the remainder of this report is the need for quality, as well as quantity, and the need to think about long-term implications for ‘place’, as well as the important and more immediate need for more housing”.
It went on:
“This was a consistent theme throughout much of the evidence that we heard; many witnesses told us that the design, quality and standard of much recent development is simply not good enough. The coordination between different aspects of the built environment is, in places, sadly lacking … We believe that, as a nation, we need to recognise the power of place and to be much more ambitious when planning, designing, constructing and maintaining our built environment. Failure to do so will result in significant long-term costs”.
Those are extremely wise words. One only needs to look at one factor, which is heritage. The report states:
“The National Planning Policy Framework seeks to balance heritage protection and development policies. We believe that it is essential that this balance is sustained, enhanced and delivered. We recommend that planning and development policy and practice should reflect more explicitly the fact that our historic environment is a cultural and economic asset rather than an obstacle to successful future developments”,
and so on. If one took every line of the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, to which I have put my name, one would find that there are supporting statements in this report.
I very much hope that the Minister and this House will listen to some wise words in this report. We spent many months listening to many witnesses, whose evidence quite overwhelmingly says that we need to amend and make much more of the guidance, whether through a new clause like this or through much tighter guidance, to make sure that place is properly taken into account in our planning system.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
My Lords, I have listened and have been most interested, and I agree with most of what has been said. The only thing I am unhappy about is that phrase “place making”. The noble Lord mentioned heritage, which is very important because we are creating heritage for the future. “Place making”, however, seems a pretty dull phrase, and I hope that by the time we get to Report, noble Lords may come up with something better.
Lord Inglewood (Con)
My Lords, I had the privilege to be a member of the Select Committee on the built environment, and like the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, I have not spoken in this debate before, so I declare the interest I have put in the register.
Planning will not go away—that seems certain. Whatever side of the House you sit on, there has to be a recognition that planning will continue on our island because of the number of people we have and the appropriate amount of land we have. Against that background—I spent the first decade of my working life working in and around planning matters—there is obviously an enormous amount of controversy about what might happen, and so on. However, the perennial problem as I have always seen it is that people get bogged down and put off by the mass of detail that surrounds this topic, and we need a consensus across the political divide and across the rural and urban communities about the generality of what planning is all about.
My noble friend Lady Gardner quite rightly said that the word “place” is perhaps not the most romantic or exciting sounding word, but it conveys a very important phenomenon. As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said we want people in this country to live in a decent place in a decent environment, because that in turn will generate a much better quality of life for them and their families. While I am not unhappy with the detailed wording of what is proposed in the amendment, there is a case for saying that if we can find a brief form of words that would encapsulate what land use planning in this country is all about—and the emphasis will change over time—it would be to everyone’s advantage, not least because the generality of the direction in which policies will subsequently be developed will be set in a framework.
Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a fellow of the RIBA. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for his kind words about the Select Committee and endorse the importance of this amendment. I will add only one point, as I agree with almost everything that has been said so far. Planning is one of our vital professions, but it has suffered in recent decades in prestige, status and most recently in numbers, as local authorities have cut services, whose value they have come to appreciate less. A clause like this one would return the idea of vision to the career of planning, which sorely needs it. I hope the Minister will understand that we need to revitalise the career of planning so that the places which are made as a result of a development are truly places in which people thrive.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I agree with what has been said so far in this debate. I want to emphasise that this is an extremely important amendment because it underpins so much of what follows. It provides the framework within which individual policies can be devised to secure sustainable development and sustainable place-making, and it is important that we have something in the Bill that emphasises that importance of planning.
Two years ago I chaired the University of Birmingham’s policy commission on future urban living. As we took evidence, it became very clear that it was going to be very difficult to make significant change without an enhanced planning system to lead it and a better understanding of why it matters. We concluded that planners must not be seen simply as regulators. That is increasingly the way in which the role of the planning profession in local government has gone. Planners have to be seen as part of a senior management team of a council with a specific role in achieving long-term sustainable development and long-term sustainable place-making. I use that phrase because it is the one that is in common parlance when discussing planning.
It is very important that officers of councils have a broader responsibility in planning than simply regulation. Achieving all this requires a radical upgrade in the importance of planning to attract back the multidisciplinary creative talent that was once prevalent in planning departments. For that reason, the objectives of this amendment are very important because they explain the role of planning as a multidisciplinary function in the local authority. As the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, said, in recent years we have lost sight of the importance of planning. I agree absolutely with that. I think it is a very important statement.
As the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, has just pointed out—I think I am quoting him correctly—it is important that we capture land-use planning. This is very important, and it is absolutely right that we should.
Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)
My Lords, I remind everyone that I declared a bunch of interests at the start of the debates. I am going to add another one now, seeing that the NPPF has been mentioned. I was one of the four practitioners who wrote the original draft of the NPPF, and I confirm that it is not necessary to add this set of words to the Bill, because that is what the NPPF already does. It is about sustainable development, and that will be determined individually by each council with each application in its area. Putting something in the Bill will limit the ability of councils to deliver what we need to deliver.
Unlike noble Lords who have spoken before, looking through rose-tinted glasses, about what the world has become since 1947 and the planning Act, I remind noble Lords that the tower blocks that we have started to knock down were once seen as iconic buildings of the 1947 Act. I am not sure that we want to go back to that world. Probably my final statement on this will be that this fantastic building that we all have the privilege of operating from would not have been built under the 1947 Act.
Baroness Morgan of Ely (Lab)
My Lords, I set on record my best wishes to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and wish him a speedy recovery. In this Bill we have a half-baked, ill-thought-through set of proposals. Parliament, local government, housing providers and the voluntary sector have been treated in a high-handed manner in the development and consultation of this Bill. No regulations have been produced, and the Government freely admit that regulations will, for the most part, not be available until many months after this Bill has become an Act of Parliament. All we have been offered is an expression of frustration from the Government at that fact. This is not a good way to pass legislation that stands the test of time. It is, however, definitely the way to pass legislation that is quickly discredited, not used, and fails everyone—a bit like the recent Budget.
Amendment 89LZA, proposed and set out passionately by my noble friend Lady Andrews and supported by the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Greaves, seeks, as we have heard, to put in the Bill this new clause, which sets out the purpose of planning. It is a set of principles to which planners need to adhere. Since 2010 there have been a number of changes to the planning process, as we have heard. It is good that we have an expert here from the National Planning Policy Framework, which sets out how local people and local councils can produce their own local plans. The Localism Act 2011 gave specific powers to local authorities and local communities to develop planning policies, but this amendment would help to give a framework for that decision-making process. I acknowledge that it is generally accepted that sustainability needs to be considered, but the amendment would put it on the face of the Bill. That is why it is important for everybody to be absolutely clear about what we are trying to achieve. If the Minister has any objections, I would like to know exactly what they are.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, before I begin, I want to echo the views expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, about the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark. From the government Benches, we also wish him a speedy recovery.
I thank the noble Baroness for her comments on her amendment. I agree that sustainable development is integral to the planning system and that a plan-led approach is key to delivering it—which were almost the precise words of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. However, I do not believe that the amendment, although well-intentioned, is necessary to secure sustainable development through planning.
The Government have put local and neighbourhood plans at the heart of the planning system. We abolished top-down regional strategies and devolved more power to local communities through neighbourhood planning. This puts local planning authorities and communities at the forefront of shaping a vision for their area and deciding how to meet their development needs. Our commitment to a plan-led system is underlined in national policy and is at the heart of the current system that has the development plan as the starting point for decisions on planning applications. We have also made clear our commitment to getting local plans in place and streamlining the local plan-making process.
The amendment would make sustainable development a legal purpose of planning and provides detail on objectives that plan-making authorities should deliver. However, I believe that this is already addressed in both legislation and policy, and that the proposed amendment would not achieve its objective.
Section 39 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 already sets out that bodies preparing local development documents should do so with the objective of contributing to the achievement of sustainable development. As my noble friend Lord Porter said, our National Planning Policy Framework is clear that sustainable development should be at the heart of planning and be pursued in a positive and integrated way. The framework is explicit that the purpose of the planning system is to contribute to achieving sustainable development, and that the three pillars of the environment, society and economy are mutually dependent and should not be pursued in isolation. It makes it clear that policies set out in paragraphs 18 to 219, taken as a whole, constitute the Government’s view of what sustainable development in England means in practice for the planning system. Taken together, these requirements ensure that the principle of sustainable development runs through all levels of plan making; that is, strategic, local and neighbourhood. Because decisions on individual applications must by law be plan led, the goal of sustainable development permeates the planning system as a whole.
While I fully agree about the importance of sustainable development, I do not believe that setting out an exhaustive definition of it, as under the proposed amendment, is the right way to ensure that local communities take a leading role in contributing to its achievement. The amendment would require those involved in planning to satisfy a prescriptive, eight-part definition of sustainable development. This would add considerably to the complexity of the system, pose significant practical implications and take no regard of the individual contexts that local planning authorities have to address. My noble friend Lord Inglewood alluded to those matters.
The added complexity introduced by the amendment would likely result in more legal challenges to plans and planning decisions. It could have the unintended consequence of discouraging local planning authorities from preparing plans and discouraging applications from coming forward.
Placing in statute such a lengthy, statutory definition of sustainable development which applies to all planning decisions, including on applications, is unrealistic. How would a person applying for a loft extension prove that their development complied with the amendment’s proposed principle to,
“contribute to the vibrant cultural and artistic development of the community”?
Nor does it take account of the fact that sustainable development is an evolving concept. I believe that sustainable development needs to allow for future progress in our understanding of what is sustainable.
We want to ensure that all local authorities can effectively plan for the individual needs of their areas, and that they are able to respond to changing demands. The amendment would impose an additional, and unnecessary, legal burden on delivering the homes and sustainable growth that this country needs.
The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, raised the matter of the report of the House of Lords Select Committee on the National Policy for the Built Environment. We are, of course, carefully considering the committee’s findings and will issue a government response in due course, and perhaps that gives her some reassurance. I hope that this also provides a little reassurance to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, that we attach considerable importance to this matter. However, I must disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, that the National Planning Policy Framework is weak with regard to sustainable development.
To take up a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, which focuses on heritage, as we heard, it is a matter for the conservation and enhancement of the historic environment and is one of the key principles of the national planning policy. The national planning policy recognises that the historic environment can be a stimulus to economic development by acting as a catalyst for regeneration and inspiring high-quality design. It requires local authorities, in developing a positive strategy for the conservation and enjoyment of the historic environment, to take account of opportunities to draw on the contribution made by the historic environment to the character of a place. It sets out a clear expectation that all planning processes should respond to local character and history, and that local authorities should look for opportunities for new development in relation to heritage assets to enhance or better reveal their significance.
I hope that the noble Baroness will be somewhat reassured by my explanation and will be prepared to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Andrews
I am grateful to the noble Viscount for his reply, and I am particularly grateful to everyone around the Chamber who has supported the proposed new clause. There was a stark contrast with the enthusiasm shown by Members of the House to the response of the Minister, and to an extent the Minister’s response was predictable—if not rather nervous, I thought. I can understand, having been in the position that he is in, how difficult it is sometimes for a Government to accept a positive statement of policy in a Bill, but it has happened in the past—I think of the Children Act 2004 and the paramount importance of the child. All I am asking for in this proposed new clause is that a statement for the positive purposes of planning be put in the planning Bill. We may not have another planning Bill for some years. I have difficulty in understanding quite why it would be a deterrent to local authorities rather than something of an inspiration.
We all believe, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said, that planners have tremendous creativity and a great role to play in the shaping of the future community. I understand perfectly well that we have definitions of sustainable development in other planning Acts, and I know how hard it was to achieve them. I also know that the final draft of the National Planning Policy Framework, which was crawled over by many consulted bodies, is an excellent document, but it took some arriving at. However, I do not think that that is a substitute for having something in the Bill which simply says that in this country we believe that planning has a significant role and can actually achieve more than it is likely to achieve without having such a statement of purpose.
Although I will withdraw the amendment at this point, I would like to consider with colleagues around the House whether it would be worth bringing it back, possibly in a different form, at the next stage.
Baroness Andrews
“Duty to deliver accessible housing
(1) Part 3 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 is amended as follows.(2) After section 39 (sustainable development) insert—“39A Duty to ensure supply of wheelchair-accessible housing(1) An English planning authority must carry out its relevant planning functions with a view to ensuring the adequate supply of accessible and adaptable dwellings and wheelchair-user dwellings in England.(2) A local planning authority in England must have regard to any relevant guidance given by the Secretary of State in carrying out the duty under subsection (1).””
Baroness Andrews
My Lords, this is a very different sort of amendment, and it is about a different sort of priorities. Our decisions, wherever we make them in government, should be about giving priority to people whose needs are evidently greater than ours and whose potential is diminished because those needs are not met. One of the many failures of the current Housing and Planning Bill, as has been pointed out over many days now and with regard to many aspects of the Bill—from starter homes to pay to stay—is that it marginalises people who are in real need and who cannot take advantage of market forces. This amendment is about one such group: disabled people with mobility difficulties, whose outstanding need is for accessible and adaptable homes.
Baroness Greengross (CB)
My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, in this very important amendment. She described it and made her case so beautifully. I rise because I spent six years as a commissioner in the Equality and Human Rights Commission. I am very much aware that people with disabilities are, rightly, a protected group in our country. Therefore, not complying with the amendment might be seen even as discriminatory by many people. Even more importantly, it would not be the right thing to do. What is the point of being in a protected group if there is no possibility of you being able to live in a local housing project? It is just logic; we have to do something to fulfil our obligations and do so with a good will.
The number of people with disabilities is rising. Thankfully, they, like any other person in our society, have a much better chance of survival than previously. This means that an appropriate proportion of housing in any development should be fully accessible to wheelchair users, as the noble Baroness has proposed. Therefore, I support her very important amendment.
I turn now to the amendment standing in my name in this group. As Mark Twain so famously said:
“Buy land, they’re not making it anymore”.
During Committee, a host of ideas have been put forward as to what we should do about the severe housing shortage facing us as a nation. While a large number of the ideas that have been put forward are great in theory, unfortunately some of them do not always work in practice, as has been repeatedly demonstrated in some of the debates we have already had, while others have been proven after many years of successful practice.
One such is retirement housing for older people with supported care needs. This is often called “extra care retirement housing”, which might not be the best name for it. There are others, often called “close care”, or they may be part of a retirement village. They are provided by a whole range of providers in the public, voluntary and private sectors. Such developments are not merely housing schemes designed without stairs, with grab rails and so on for older people; they offer older people a whole lifestyle, providing independent living, where many of the day-to-day chores are taken care of, and where support services come into play if they are required. People there have the reassurance of knowing that trained help is on hand if they need it. There is a restaurant that provides not just food but company when they wish to go there. There is a lounge or lounges available with activities to take part in. There is a guest suite, so that if the family wants to come to stay, it can. There are also 24/7 alarm calls and monitoring by those who understand the needs of older people.
During the years, I have met hundreds—in fact, probably many thousands—of older people in this and other types of housing. Because of my experience, my husband and I were able to ensure that my mother spent the last five years of her life in extra care retirement housing. She lived there, and died happily in her own home, with friends and family around her. I want many more people to have that opportunity.
The case for providing extra care retirement housing goes much further. At the same time as providing all these services, it also offers direct benefits to both local and national government because it brings down the costs of both health and welfare provision. This has already been said in relation to people with disabilities. I declare an interest as I head up the think tank, the International Longevity Centre UK. A study by the ILC in 2011 showed—to take just two examples—that extra care residents are less likely to be admitted for overnight stay in hospital and that they experience fewer falls. The study also showed that around 19% of those aged 80 or more, living in the community and receiving domiciliary care, were likely to move into institutional or residential care, while only 10% of people in extra care housing were expected to do so. That cuts the numbers by more or less a half. So as well as enhancing well-being for many, it keeps older people at home for longer and gives them opportunities to have a full life and to contribute to their communities because they still live in them.
There was a lady I knew who was totally disabled and in her late 70s. Her MP used to speak to me about her often because she was in awe of her; sadly, she died recently. This lady was about the best telephone campaigner in her area and she often terrified her MP. She was able to be in her community and be a resource in that community.
This amendment does not try to spell out quotas or targets but it ensures that there is a legal duty on people who make decisions on planning applications to have special regard to the need for such provision in the community. As such, I hope that it will be acceptable to your Lordships’ House. For me, extra care retirement housing—or housing of that type—ticks all the boxes. It adds to the housing stock; it encourages downsizing where appropriate. At a time when everyone is rightly concerned about the availability of finance, it releases funds that would otherwise be spent on health, social care and other forms of welfare provision. It truly is a win-win situation.
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, I shall say a few words in support of the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, which I signed with some enthusiasm, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross.
Looking back over the past 40 years during which I have been involved in housing issues, it seems that the drive and impetus to provide adequate housing for disabled people across a range of level of disabilities, together with the drive to provide better housing for older people, has faltered. As part of the current wish of people across the political spectrum to have more houses built, simply building them has a higher priority than what kind and quality of houses are built. That is something which I read right through this Bill. I hope that I am wrong, but that is how I read it.
Lord Swinfen (Con)
My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews. I have been in this House since 1977. During that time, the number of Members on the mobile Bench has increased considerably. When I entered the House, I think there was one, possibly two. That is an example of what is happening in the wider world around us, where you see more and more people using wheelchairs. More of us are living much longer because of the improvement in medicines and doctoring. That means that more people will need wheelchairs.
A property that is built for wheelchair use does not preclude it being used by people who do not need wheelchairs. However, those who move into that property when they do not need a wheelchair will not have the expense and complete upset of having to move home when they do. The more residential property with proper wheelchair access that is built, whether it comprises blocks of flats or individual houses, the better. Make it easy for one and you make it easy for all to keep people in their homes. Most people want to stay in their homes permanently. I strongly support the noble Baroness’s amendment which would also cover most of what is required by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)
My Lords, I shall add a quick comment. Of course, I support my noble friend’s amendment and the absolutely spot-on comments of the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen. However, quite a number of elderly people suffer from disabilities which do not confine them to a wheelchair but still require aids and adaptations to be built into the property. For example, they cannot lean over to open a window if the windows are too high and stiff; their arthritic hands make them incapable of that. They cannot manage plugs at floor level because they cannot stoop and bend. These have to be sited at about waist height: suitable for anybody, whether in a wheelchair or not. They will need surfaces in kitchens which are, if you like, on Ladderax and can be adapted as they become more physically immobile but not necessarily confined to a wheelchair. Many of them will, alas, go on to suffer from mental health deterioration such as Alzheimer’s and so on. They will need smart gadgetry in their homes. In my city, the estimates for building that in when housing for older people is built are around £10,000. If you try to retrofit, you quadruple that cost.
I do not disagree in the slightest with the remarks that have already been made: I very much support them. However, I hope that we take a wider view of the increasing frailties that are being generated among elderly people. Many of them will be in wheelchairs; many will have disabilities and frailties which are not wheelchair-related. They may be hard of hearing; they may have difficulty getting into the house. In my housing association’s sheltered housing scheme, one of our most difficult problems now is retrofitting space for mobility scooters and their charging. The housing was built 20 years ago, when mobility scooters, as we know them, hardly existed. Now there may be 15 to 20 mobility scooters in a scheme of 40 households, but nowhere to park them or plug them in. There is a real problem of space standards here. I know that it is hard to think forward and we will always end up retrofitting, but I hope that the Government will take this away and consult with architects and companies like Habinteg which have very wide experience of disability needs in house-building, to see what that agenda should look like for the next 20 or 30 years.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, this case has been made very clearly, but I will say something about the adaptation of homes, because I was chairman of social services and knew quite a lot of places. Often, a home is adapted for someone for their life and readapted several times. That is excellent, but it is important that, after that person has gone, the adaptations are not just thrown away, as I saw happen far too often. The home should be used again for someone else in a similar situation.
Baroness Morgan of Ely
My Lords, the accessibility of housing stock to people with mobility problems remains woefully low and more needs to be done by the Government to increase the number of homes where people with disabilities or mobility problems can live. By increasing the supply of homes that are accessible to people with disabilities or who have mobility problems, we will help people with care needs to be able to stay in their own home for longer and, potentially, reduce the costs on other services. The whole area of adult social care needs careful consideration. The benefits and challenges of living longer need to be addressed. We need to ensure that people can live rewarding lives for as long as possible.
We need to bear in mind the fact that people are likely to spend 20 or 30 years in retirement. It is, therefore, important to focus on this when we are developing policy. My noble friend Lady Andrews was absolutely correct to draw the attention of the Committee to the self-inflicted damage done to this Government by their treatment of the disabled in the Budget last week. By accepting this amendment, they might make up some of the massive territory that they lost with the disabled community this week.
The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, with her wealth of experience, is someone the Government really should listen to. Amendment 89LZC, in her name, requires that planning authorities, or the Secretary of State, should have special regard to the local need to provide adequate and appropriate accommodation for that ageing population. We support that position. Amendment 102, in the name of my noble friends Lord Kennedy and Lord Beecham sets out to put, in the relevant regulation, the fact that new dwellings should meet the nationally described space standards published in March 2015. This amendment is only putting into the schedule to the Bill the Building Regulations standards agreed by this Government and I hope the Minister can accept it.
Lord Swinfen
The noble Baroness is castigating the Government for the way that developers are building residential accommodation. Should she not be castigating developers for not thinking about how much longer their residential property could be used if it were properly designed in the first place? The Building Regulations are there, so developers need to produce answers not just the Government.
Baroness Morgan of Ely
Absolutely, but it would make sense for the Government to ensure that developers are absolutely clear about their responsibilities. These amendments would send a message to those developers: that they need to take this on board and that it is in their own interests to ensure that these provisions are made.
Lord Stunell (LD)
My Lords, I support the amendments that the noble Baronesses, Lady Andrews and Lady Greengross, have brought forward. I will also speak briefly on Amendment 102, which the Labour Front Bench has just referred to.
I agree with the points raised by those who proposed the amendments. It is absolutely the case that the population demographics of this country require housing to be much more adapted, adaptable and enduring in its adaptability. The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, made the very good point that once adapted a property should, wherever possible, be put to continuous good use. It should certainly not be made unaccessible by subsequent occupiers.
I want to pick up a point arising from Amendment 102 about introducing into Building Regulations minimum standards for internal spaces. The standards published last March in fact cover some of the ground that these amendments cover and so I ask the Minister not to put too much weight on the additional cost, and the therefore likely reduction in the number of homes built, as a result of adopting any or all of these amendments. The reality is that, if the building industry is told to do something through regulations or enforceable codes, while it may grumble, it will do it. The additional cost will then rapidly be taken out of the equation because of the number of properties built.
In that respect, I want to draw the Minister’s attention to some remarks made by the chair of the Berkeley Group reported in the magazine Building a week or two ago—he was referring to affordable housing but I am sure his point is just as relevant for accessible housing. The article says:
“Tony Pidgley has said the government needs to impose a fixed level of ‘affordable’ housing on every development if it wants to tackle the housing crisis. Pidgley said if ministers insisted on a … rule developers would just get on with it”.
That is a critical point for the Government to understand. The industry will always grumble and complain that it does not want to do things and this can be used as an excuse by Ministers and civil servants to reject amendments like those in front of us. I hope that the Minister will steer clear of that argument.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I was not going to speak on this, but I would like to say a few words. Nobody can disagree about the importance of people with specific needs having specific housing. I know about this personally as my eldest daughter is in a wheelchair. She is very lucky: she has an accessible house with an accessible bathroom and kitchen—you and I could not use that kitchen; I can assure you, I have tried. But I cannot support this amendment. Local authorities understand the changing demography of their areas, and I do not want the Government telling those who know their people what type of housing they should have. I fear that an amendment such as this will end up with quotas and those quotas will not fit the demography of that particular place. At certain times, yes, you do need places and all of us probably need places for older people, but some areas need more than others. It is the same with disabled people and specific places for specific disabilities. I ask that we do not agree to this amendment and we allow flexibility in local areas for their specific needs.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, I profoundly disagree with that case. I will refer a little later to my own experience of dealing with these matters.
I understand from the DCLG website that older people now occupy nearly one-third of all houses in the United Kingdom, and nearly two-thirds of the projected increase in the number of households over the next 17 or 18 years will be in households headed by someone over 65. We have an ageing population going into housing all over the country, the vast majority of which is simply not intended for that purpose and has not been adapted. Very often, the people who are moving cannot afford to adapt the housing because they fall within a means-testing system, which sometimes they find embarrassing or sometimes leaves them on the margin and they do not really want to spend the money.
I understand that the Government have introduced a disabled facilities grant, home improvement agencies and FirstStop advice centres. The National Planning Policy Framework asked local authorities to assess housing requirements, including for the elderly. But that is just not enough.
In a case that I was involved in—and I understand it is quite common because I talked to the salesmen from the various lift companies, such as Stannah and Acorn, who visit people’s homes—the issue was the depth of the stairlift. Many stairlifts on the market can be fitted only in homes that have stairs of a certain width. Many homes cannot take British lifts and people buy the German lift because that is a narrower lift going up the stairs. I would have thought that it would be simple for the Government to insist, whether through the Building Regulations or whatever, that when companies are building houses, the stairs are of at least a certain width to enable lifts to be fitted when, inevitably, they will be required in a very large number of homes in the United Kingdom as the population of this country gets older and we reflect on the statistics on the huge increase in households headed by people over 65.
Dealing with the point that the noble Baroness has just made—she has reservations about quotas and so on—I cannot see why we cannot lay down really important standards of that nature so we can get over the problem. That is exactly what the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, deals with. It refers specifically to the requirement to,
“have special regard to the local need for such accommodation”.
There is no reason at all why most houses cannot be built within a spec that is easily adaptable for disabled requirements.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, before I respond to the amendments, I will make some introductory remarks to set today’s discussions in context.
This Government want to see new homes and places that communities can be proud of and which stand the test of time. We want to ensure that the appropriate infrastructure is in place when and where it is needed. We also want to see high-quality design creating places, buildings or spaces that work well for everyone, look good and will adapt to the needs of future generations. All sections of society have a role to play.
The Government have a leadership responsibility in setting the overall planning framework. Local government plays a critical role in the delivery of great places, applying the principles of the framework to fit the local context. For example, through the National Planning Policy Framework, we require local planning authorities to plan proactively to meet the local housing needs in the area based on the needs of different groups in the community. Through their local plans, planning authorities set out the vision for the local area, the types of housing they need, and their expectations for the design quality of the built environment, including standards of individual dwellings.
The amendments all tackle very important issues but, as I will explain, it is not necessary to place new requirements on local authorities. Amendment 89LZB, proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, places a requirement on local planning authorities that in carrying out their planning functions they ensure the adequate supply of accessible and adaptable dwellings and wheelchair-user dwellings in England. National planning policy sets out clearly the need for local authorities, through their local plan, to plan for the housing needs of all members of the community and that planning should encourage accessibility. We expect them to work closely with key partners and their local communities in deciding what type of housing is needed.
The introduction of optional requirements for accessibility in the building regulations provides local authorities with the tools needed to ensure that new homes are accessible and that, in particular, the needs of older and disabled people are met. Some areas, including London, are already making use of these standards. I believe it is right that decisions on how and where to apply these standards should remain with local authorities.
The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, raised the issue that there are not enough accessible homes and that councils are not compelled to make provision. She is correct to say that, in viewing the housing stock in England, only a limited number of homes are accessible, but that is not the result of current policy. It is because of the historical failure to plan for accessible housing, which I think the noble Baroness and I agree on. As a Government we are taking up this important challenge, which other Governments have not done.
Building regulations for accessibility were introduced only in 1999, setting minimum standards for step-free access and downstairs lavatories, and to ensure that doors and corridors are accessible. It should therefore be no surprise that the vast majority of existing housing is lacking in some or all those features. But current policy ensures that, at the very least, in new homes these minimum standards for accessibility are met. We have introduced higher levels of accessibility into the building regulations which local authorities can apply in relation to need. In London, a requirement in planning policy is for 90% of homes to meet category 2, which is accessible and adaptable dwellings, and for 10% of homes to be category 3, which is wheelchair-user dwellings. Other planning authorities can and do set different requirements, and my noble friend Lady Scott raised the important point about the flexibility needed in a local area.
Independent research undertaken as part of the Housing Standards Review indicated that 76% of local authorities already have policies for accessible and adaptable housing standards in their local plans. The expectation is that this will continue to improve over time, and the same research indicated that between 2005 and 2014 the number of local plans adopting lifetime home standards had increased from 35% to 60%. We expect this trend to continue and we should allow our current policies to bed in before considering further action.
The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, asked how many people need accessible housing. I am pleased to tell her that the planning practice guidance which we have published is very informative in this respect. The English housing survey for 2011-12 tells us that around 30%—29.8% to be specific—of households include a person with a long-term illness or disability, and in 2007-08 some 3.3% of all households included one or more wheelchair user. The data in the planning practice guidance provide further sources of census, population, rental, housing and payments statistics which are important to help in the evaluation of specific local needs for accessible homes.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, for her Amendment 89LZC. I agree that it is important that we plan to meet the needs of all members of society. In particular, since this country is expecting the number of people over 65 to reach about 17 million by 2035, it is important that we plan specifically for the needs of older people. This point was well made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. I recognise that many older people do not want or need specialist accommodation or care and may wish to live in general housing that is already suitable, such as bungalows, or in homes that can be adapted to meet any change in their needs. Helping people to remain in their own homes and preventing or delaying the need for acute care can help ensure better outcomes for older people and reduce costs to local services.
We have already put in place a range of mechanisms to support local authorities in planning and delivering specific and diverse types of housing for older people. The care and support specialised housing fund will, over its two phases, fund a total of 221 schemes to develop up to 6,000 affordable homes. Under the affordable homes programme the Government have committed £1.6 billion for 100,000 homes for an affordable or intermediate rent, including 8,000 new homes specifically for vulnerable people, older people and people with disabilities. We also recognise that, at some point, a number of older people will want—or indeed need—to move into supported housing. We must therefore ensure that there are sufficient homes available.
However, I do not think that this amendment is necessary. The National Planning Policy Framework already requires local planning authorities to plan for a mix of housing based on the current and future needs of different groups in the community, including older people. This includes provision of specialist accommodation or dedicated accommodation specifically for older people. Furthermore, the need for specialist accommodation is already a factor that can be taken into account by local planning authorities when considering planning applications for such facilities.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, whose Amendment 102 seeks to set a national minimum space standard for new homes. I share his concern about poorly designed housing developments and agree that new homes should be of a high quality—a point I made earlier. However, setting a national regulatory minimum size for all new homes would not be the right way to address the concerns on quality, size and housing need.
Noble Lords will be aware that in March last year the Government published a national space standard for new dwellings that local authorities could choose to adopt in their local planning policies. This was an outcome of the housing standards review, which looked at a wide range of standards applied to new housing and introduced a simplified and defined framework that removed overlap, contradictions and duplication.
Housing need and viability differ across the country. We need to ensure the widest range of options for as broad a market of buyers as we can. We must cater for a range of incomes and different dwelling sizes. Local authorities are best placed to understand and decide how to meet these varying local housing needs and we expect them—with the input of local communities—to put in place local plan policies that will bring forward new homes of a size that meet local needs. But they must also ensure that development remains viable and affordable for a range of home buyers.
We continue to support the adoption of space standards through planning policy where needed and where appropriate. It provides a flexible way to address concerns about the size of new homes, whereas a requirement through the building regulations will limit viability and rule out a flexible approach to meet local circumstances. With this explanation I hope that the noble Baroness will agree to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Andrews
I am very grateful to the noble Lord for that full response and to everyone who spoke in the debate. There was a very thoughtful and humane response around the Chamber. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, for drawing attention to some of the inexorable facts of an ageing society and the challenges that we face. The Minister was right when he said we were looking at an accumulation of programmes caused by an historic failure to come to terms with a society that is ageing. It is because it is historic failure that it is urgent. That is why, while I appreciate that the Government do not want to put a new duty on local authorities, we need a clearer and more urgent sense of priorities from them that this needs to be addressed.
There is a lot of good stuff happening, but we need a national conversation about the challenges that we face, and it can be led only by the Government. It is a wider debate than the one that we have had today, and the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, referred to it in her excellent amendment. It is a debate about where housing in an ageing population fits into the challenge of housing the whole nation. If we provide on the assumption of an ageing population, as Berkeley Homes does so well, we free up housing stock and make it easier to find homes for families. As my noble friend Lady Hollis said, we are looking at the opportunities presented by enormous numbers of smart technologies, which will help us not only to provide the sort of housing that would really suit ageing people but to reduce the costs to the health service. This is an important amendment, because it raises a debate that really goes to the heart of what this Bill is about and how intelligently it plans for the future, but also what we as a country are about in the care that we give to our older families.
“Lee Valley Regional Park Authority
In section 48 of the Lee Valley Regional Park Act 1966 (precepts), after subsection (11) insert—“(12) No precept or levy shall be imposed by the Authority or be payable to the Authority under this section unless the council or London Borough concerned has in its annual budget resolutions assented to the imposition of such a precept or levy by the Authority and specifically approved that levy or precept by a majority on a recorded vote.””
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, before moving this amendment, I hope that the House will not mind if I, too, express my shock at the news about the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark. Not only by his charm and skill at the Dispatch Box has he won our affections but, as leader of a London authority—I declare that I am, too—I know that he is respected in local government across London. I hope that other noble Lords will convey to him what I know will be the best wishes of every London borough leader for a speedy recovery.
In introducing this amendment, I make it clear that I do not wish to press it in its present form. It is a probing amendment. I said earlier in these proceedings that it is in some ways a provocative amendment. I would not press it as there is a risk that it might make the Bill hybrid, among other things, but also because the solution will not be the solution proposed in this amendment. However, I believe that the issue needs to be aired. I know that it has not pleased the Lee Valley authority; because its lobbying efforts are poorly directed, I have quite a little dossier of material that it has sent out to various people asking for the status quo to be defended.
The Lee Valley Regional Park Authority runs what is a 26-mile long linear park running from Ware in Hertfordshire to the East India Dock. It was set up under legislation passed in 1966 and started in 1967. That is, frankly, another world—remember England as World Cup winners, Harold Wilson at No. 10 and the young Leonid Brezhnev thrusting his way forward in the Soviet Union. Since then, in those 50 years, a lot has changed. The area has been transformed by the staging of the 2012 Olympics and from those Olympics the Lee Valley authority received a legacy of the Olympic velopark, the only site in the world that brings together all four Olympic cycling disciplines. It was lately the site of the world’s cycling championships, which I saw reported to have been before sell-out crowds with a global television audience—a venue claimed on the LVA’s own website to be,
“a jaw-dropping events space … in the super league of London’s … venues”.
It has the Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre, another Olympic facility, which will stage the Women’s Hockey Champions Trophy in June with finals-day tickets priced up to £62.50 a throw—they have already sold out—and with indoor tennis courts at £20 an hour off peak. It has the Lee Valley White Water Centre, another Olympic venue, offering corporate half-days at a minimum of £164 per person and the self-proclaimed state-of-the-art Lee Valley Athletics Centre. There is the Lee Valley Ice Centre, home to two ice hockey teams, and the Lee Valley Riding Centre, with stables offering full five-star livery services for £10,000 a year—not exactly a service for London’s poor. There are two golf courses, two boating marinas, two large camp and caravan sites, six heritage sites, a sports ground complex, seven parks and wetland sites and 1,400 hectares of land and water resources. In addition, the authority runs two farms which the accounts say feature £250,000 of “biological assets”—dairy cattle to you and me. I am surprised that the TaxPayers’ Alliance has not cottoned on to that one.
According to the 2014-15 accounts, not one of those assets made a profit, apart from a princely £17,000 from the Lee Valley Boat Centre. Even netting out the £1.9 million cost of leisure management services and ignoring the losses on tourism services reported in the accounts, these facilities cost £35 million to run for a gross income of under £12.5 million. The authority had eight staff with packages of over £100,000 a year and a director of communications paid some £73,000, who, it seems, lifts the phone to the lobbying firm some of us have heard of, London Communications Agency, whose fee I cannot find disclosed in the accounts, although I note from its own website that the agency’s chairman boasts Lee Valley among the prized accounts that he handles personally, along with Chelsea Football Club. I doubt whether London’s council tax payers get that PR service cheaply. In short, here is a large public sector body sitting on immense resources and losing money on them. There is no reason to think that any of these vital sporting and environmental assets would be threatened by reducing or ending the LVA planning rule or by better or changed management or a plan to bring the thing into balance.
The fact is that were these prize assets subject to any other public local authority, we would be expected by the Front Bench and taxpayers alike to be looking for a way to balance the books fast by outsourcing, raising income or cutting costs. It defies belief that such a massive and diverse portfolio as I have described needs a huge public subsidy. Instead, because the LVA has a residual planning function and a legal right in carrying out its park and planning duties to precept 32 London boroughs and councils in the counties of Essex and Hertfordshire, including Thurrock Council, it has a captive subsidy and therefore relatively little incentive to be efficient. It simply posts a bill to taxpayers, often an hour or two away from its facilities, to pay for half of all its activities—£10.8 million in precept. Formal break-even targets are vaguely spoken about but are far away.
Looking at some of the typical levies, Bexley’s levy of £230,000 would not cover the authority’s advertising budget and Kingston’s levy would not cover the cost of its chief executive’s pay package. There is no relation between the levy and performance, benefit or usage. It is simply a tax—taxation without representation—for many London authorities that pay the lion’s share, have few visitors to the park and no representation on the board, while other districts that pay nothing do. My amendment would introduce accountability by ensuring that the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority had to prove its worth and competence in order to win payments from willing, not captive, councils. It asks that a proposal to support the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority be put on the same basis as any other budget proposal put before a council.
I recognise, as do all those authorities unhappy with this archaic system—and I have been encouraged by many other London local authorities and Essex County Council—that in the real world that is unrealistic. However, it reflects a legitimate end-result aspiration, so by raising this issue I ask instead that we might look at reform. I hope that my noble friend may be prepared to consider addressing this issue and launching a swift consultation with the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority and all others concerned to find a better and more equitable way forward to ensure financial stability, phase out the subsidy from the precepted planning authorities and safeguard the regional park’s assets. It has to be unwound in a way that protects the existing precepting authorities and does not leave the riparian authorities on their own paying for it. At a minimum, we might seek a taper of the precept leading to abolition, perhaps over a four-year period in line with the four-year settlements being sought.
There may be many ways in which we can achieve that. We need to understand why the authority loses so much on so many facilities, why more income per head is not raised and why we cannot work better. Above all, this archaic precept, which may once have served well, needs to be addressed and progressively removed to bring a worthy 20th-century authority into the modern world to manage effectively and to preserve the important 21st-century facilities that it has in its charge. I beg to move.
Lord Tope (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to be back in harness with the noble Lord, Lord True, on matters of mutual interest to south and south-west London boroughs. I am grateful to him for his quite lengthy explanation. I will try not to repeat much of what he said but to add to it. I am glad that he started by suggesting that the solution suggested in his amendment might not be what happens in the end. That is probably right and partly why I did not add my name to it.
I first came to this problem when I became leader of a London borough council, coincidentally at exactly the time that the GLC was abolished. When the regional park was established in 1966, it was funded by the Greater London Council and paid for through the precept on all London boroughs to the GLC, not to the park authority. It was brought to my attention in my first year as leader of a London borough council when suddenly we found that we had a precept to a park authority, the existence of which we were only vaguely aware of—I must confess that at the time I thought that the park was in Essex, although as the noble Lord, Lord True, said, it is not—and that we were going to be paying several hundred thousand pounds to this authority right across London. I inquired how many visitors from Sutton—my borough—went to the park and was told that there were fewer visitors from my borough, which was paying several hundred thousand pounds that year towards it, than there were from Northern Ireland. This has been a thorn in the flesh for the past 30 years, at least, and continues to be so. It gets raised on a number of occasions—the last occasion I remember was during the passage of the Localism Bill—always by ingenious methods such as that which the noble Lord, Lord True, has devised today, for which I am grateful to him.
This has become a little more important now not only because of the financial pressure on all local authorities, including the London boroughs, but because whereas 50 years ago, when the Lee Valley Regional Park was established, there was only one regional park in or partly in London, now there are three. There is the Colne Valley Regional Park, a relatively small part of which is in London, and the Wandle Valley Regional Park, which is wholly within Greater London and which covers the boroughs of Wandsworth, Croydon, Merton and Sutton. It was established a few years ago, not as a statutory authority but as a trust, and at that time I was one of the trustees. It has no funding stream. It has been funded in recent years, to the extent that it has been funded at all, by voluntary contributions from the four Wandle boroughs, as we call them. Rather than keeping the money that we obtained by Lee Valley’s reduction in precept, we chose to pass on that discount or reduction to help to fund the Wandle Valley Regional Park.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, this is in danger of appearing to be a sort of “all our yesterdays” discussion as regards London boroughs. I was deeply tempted by the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord True, when he told me that it might render the Bill hybrid, which of course would consign all the other ridiculous provisions within it to some long drawn out and time-consuming purpose. However, that would be an inappropriate and churlish way to go forward.
I think, however, that the noble Lord, Lord True, has made a number of perhaps unfair assertions about the Lee Valley Regional Park. His big concern seems to be that this legislation was crafted back in 1966, and is no longer fit for purpose. I am afraid there is plenty of local government legislation going back many decades that looks at these issues. I recall discussions about the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority in the distant days when I was a local authority leader in London. I needed some convincing at that time that this was a worthwhile contribution for my borough to be making, even though we are slightly closer than either Richmond or Sutton. I am fascinated to discover that the residents of Sutton are less adventurous than the residents of Northern Ireland as far as visiting the jewels of north-east London is concerned.
I needed some convincing, and at that time it was difficult to defend the contribution the Lee Valley Regional Park made to the wider area, but the situation is very different now. The noble Lord, Lord True, cited all the major facilities that are now available for the people of London—he made that part of his argument; I thought it was part of the argument the other way—and, of course, the other counties and areas concerned. He is appalled at the cost of some of those facilities, yet at the same time he complains that the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority is not doing enough to recover costs and reduce the burden which falls on the precept levy.
Let us therefore be clear about this. In the past 30 years, we have seen the development of a series of major facilities—given a huge advantage by the 2012 London Olympics—in north-east London which serve not only that area but a much wider area beyond, and which are trying to recover their costs. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord True, is correct that, like all cross-local-authority initiatives, it could perhaps be managed more effectively to deliver even more benefits at less cost. But through the effort it is making to raise funds, it is trying to reduce the burden raised as part of the precept. That it has done successfully and in successive years by reducing the precept year on year. That is the sign of an organisation that is trying to move in the direction that it should. The efforts of the noble Lords, Lord True and, apparently, Lord Tope—rising from Sutton—to complain about this, are an attempt to undermine this process.
Therefore, we have to ask what precisely the preferred outcome is of the noble Lord, Lord True. He says he does not want the amendment to be passed as such, which is just as well as it would be deeply unworkable, given its impact and disrupting effect on finances. He says he wants a review but, presumably, the question is, what would be its terms of reference? The reality is that such collective provisions need to be funded collectively. If you are saying that, because the London Borough of Sutton or the London Borough of Richmond are geographically a bit remote from north-east London —of course, there are excellent transport arrangements, and if the citizens of those boroughs are not prepared to travel to north-east London, that is their loss—and that you are therefore going to undermine that collective support, you are creating some very dangerous precedents for other provisions which are resourced collectively.
The Minister will obviously not want to support this amendment because of the danger it would pose to the rest of the Bill—he would be quite right to allow the rest of the Bill to fall apart, but he probably will not wish to. I hope he will assure us that any review of the way the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority is to be funded would be based on accepting the idea that this facility serves a much wider area and deserves to be collectively funded across that area, rather than the cost falling on a very narrow number of riparian boroughs and authorities.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I have a very simple question to ask of the noble Lord, Lord True. I did not see any of the briefs that he said were circulated—if I have had one sent to me, I have not seen it—but I noticed something on the internet about the authority. It seems that the chairman, Mr Paul Osborn, is a Conservative councillor; that the deputy chairman, a Mr Derrick Ashley, is a Conservative councillor; and that the Conservatives have 15 people on its board, with eight Labour members and two Liberal Democrats. In other words, this is like a family argument within the Conservative Party about the competence of their own people to manage this facility. I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord True, that he gathers them all together and puts it to them that he has a bit of a problem with his authority coughing up to pay for their excesses. I do not think that it is a matter for us; I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord True, can sort this out. I say in support of what my noble friend has just said that facilities such as this lose money all over the country. There are lots of services provided by local authorities which do not necessarily make money; they are there for the benefit of the wider community. We have that in some of the national parks where there is a problem and they have to be helped out, but we do not close them because we have trouble funding them on occasion. I enjoyed the noble Lord’s contribution; however, he talks about taxation without representation, and I think he has some pretty good representation there and he should have a little chat with them.
Baroness Morgan of Ely
My Lords, I am glad to report that my noble friend Lord Kennedy has been sent home from hospital, so that is good news.
I hate to intrude on this London borough grief—I know that my noble friend would have loved it—but I want simply to endorse the pertinent points made by my noble friend Lord Harris. We cannot make changes to how authorities are funded through amending a Bill coming towards the end of its parliamentary process without any discussion with those concerned, who would have to manage the consequences of the amendment if it were carried. It is simply not appropriate, so I hope the Minister will not accept it.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I have probably 30 years’ experience of duelling with the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, which is significant because Haringey is just a little bit nearer to the Lee Valley Regional Park than the London Borough of Sutton, yet it pays pretty well exactly the same precept. He suggested that I was trying to undermine the funding to Lee Valley; absolutely not—I am second to none in my praise and admiration for what Lee Valley does and achieves and the excellent facilities there. I said that the reduction in the precept had been used to support the Wandle Valley Regional Park; what I should have added is that Lee Valley Regional Park has been very supportive of the Wandle Valley Regional Park. It has provided tangible support to the best extent it can within its powers, and we are grateful for and appreciative of that. If anything I said has been interpreted as some form of attack on Lee Valley, some form of questioning its value, my 30 years of experience with the noble Lord, Lord Harris, lead me to suggest and put on record that that is quite wrong.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, I feel that I might be intruding on some private arrangement as well. However, in all seriousness, I thank my noble friend Lord True for Amendment 89LA, which would make the funding levy for the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority voluntary. I acknowledge the contributions that we have heard, particularly from the noble Lord, Lord Tope, and from the noble Lord, Lord Harris, with his contrasting view.
My noble friend Lord True eloquently highlighted the background and the issue. I listened carefully to what he said, so I do not wish to go over that from my perspective. Under the current arrangements, the majority of the authority’s funding is generated by its own commercial and investment activities, and the rest comes from a levy on council tax payers in the councils of Greater London, Essex and Hertfordshire. This amounts to less than a pound per head of population per year.
The Lee Valley Regional Park Authority is a private statutory body established by the Lee Valley Regional Park Act 1966. Having been established via this Act, the authority sits outside a significant proportion of current local government legislation. We believe that any potential changes to the funding levy must first be fully discussed and agreed by the affected councils and the park authority before any legislative options are considered by Parliament—how interesting that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, made this very point. We understand that such discussions have not taken place, but I can offer a light at the end of the tunnel for my noble friend Lord True, who seeks to initiate discussions with the local authorities. We will offer to meet to discuss this further, because it is important that discussions are led by the affected boroughs and not based on decisions from central government.
So, while I acknowledge the points that my noble friend has raised today, without this local agreement, we do not propose to amend the levy funding arrangements. Therefore, I hope that my noble friend will withdraw his amendment.
Lord True
My Lords, I am partially encouraged by what my noble friend says, but I am also discouraged. I assure him that I do not speak on an individual basis; indeed, the House has heard from the noble Lord, Lord Tope. Many authorities—I named a large number of them—wish this matter to be addressed, are ready to address it and have sought to address it on many occasions, as the noble Lord, Lord Tope, said. No authority can hold a veto on these discussions, including the Lee Valley itself. I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, said and, frankly, I do not think that councillors should be running commercial facilities, or facilities directly, at all. I am not troubled in any way by what he said about a Conservative councillor being the chairman. He should be doing a better job, in my judgment.
I shall look very carefully at what my noble friend said, but this nettle really needs to be grasped. It is not good enough for the noble Lord, Lord Harris, to say, “Don’t rock the boat”. The so-called reductions are 2% a year; there are authorities across this country being asked for reductions of 25% to 35%. With the facilities that that body now has, it can and must do better. All I am asking for is an agreed programme over a period of years moving towards financial equivalence.
I shall study what my noble friend said, but it would be disappointing if this did not lead to some concrete, active and swift discussions. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves
My Lords, Amendment 89N is the first in the group of amendments on the part of the Bill that refers to permission in principle and relates to Clauses 136 and 137 and Schedule 12. We move back to discussing a countrywide issue rather than a London parochial matter, which the House of Lords does so well. Most Members of the House of Lords come from London, so it is not surprising, really.
This is, I think, the most important and most central part of Part 6 of the Bill, which is the planning sections. It is regrettable that we come to it at tea-time on day eight out of seven allocated for Committee. Nevertheless, we have seven hours today to have a good look at it—and perhaps a bit more in the morning, who knows.
In Part 6, particularly in the planning-in-principle system, we are looking at a radical, fundamental change to the system of development management in this country. My second regret is that this comes to us at a late stage in the parliamentary process on the Bill without any clear understanding or knowledge at all in the country about what is being proposed. This is a technical matter and an extremely important one. For those of us who are local politicians, it is vital because it is about local planning applications, and we all know that they are some of the most controversial things that happen in relation to councils and local communities. These proposals would have been ideal for pre-legislative scrutiny. In particular, when we get on to later parts of Part 6, which were dumped into the Bill at a very late stage in the Commons and had absolutely no scrutiny, it behoves us here to do what we can in the limited amount of time that we have. This is not a good and sensible way, in my judgment, to introduce new and important legislation.
As in some of the earlier parts of the Bill, there is a huge amount of prescription of powers for Ministers to make regulations in this part of the Bill. Simply reading the Bill itself will not tell anyone how the new system will work. That again is unfortunate. Because it is part of the planning system, where a lot of the regulations in planning delegated to Ministers are done through development orders that do not go through parliamentary process, the position is even worse, because a lot of the very important consequences of what is being proposed here will not be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. So we have an important job to do.
I am grateful to have come across a document called Technical Consultation on Implementation of Planning Changes, which has been sent out to local planning authorities. It is unfortunate that it was not sent to us earlier, because it answers quite a lot of the questions about what the Government intend that is not set out in the Bill. I recommend it to noble Lords who have not seen it as bedtime reading before Report. At least it will help them go to sleep.
We all know about the present system of development control. Where planning permission is required, most development is subject to applications for planning permission to local planning authorities, which may be outlined and establish the principle of development, or may be reserved matters, or may be both taken together as a full application. The new system is unusual in that the old system will remain alongside it. I understand that it will remain for everything except housing. Even for housing, there will be a choice for people as to which system to use. It appears that the Government believe that planning in principle should rely on only three material considerations in relation to whether planning in principle for a site should be given. I am simply reporting what I think the Government are proposing.
One is location—the red line. One is uses, which I understand means housing together with any lesser uses that might be appropriate in a big housing development, such as some retail development, playgrounds or whatever. The last is the amount of development—the number of houses—which the technical consultation suggested should be flexible within quite tight limits. Once there is planning in principle, an application to the local planning authority will be required for technical details. They will have to be only within parameters—a new planning word that we will all learn to love or hate—set out in the planning in principle, if I have understood the technical consultation correctly. The planning in principle may be by allocation in a qualifying document—this may be a local development plan or a register; the brownfield register is the one that is most often talked about, but it seems that there may be other registers as well—or by application to the local authority in a similar way to application for planning permission.
As I say, all this is little known and little understood. The legislation is complicated. Even among planners there is a great deal of concern. Hugh Ellis, policy director at the Town and Country Planning Association, says:
“You can’t make a decision in principle”,
first,
“about a site until you know the detail of its implications, from flood risk appraisal to the degree of affordable housing. Giving permission in principle would fundamentally undermine our ability to build resilient, mixed communities in the long term”.
The planning manager in my local authority in Pendle, who is an extremely competent planner, said after reading and studying the consultation document:
“Until there is more clarity on the process that is involved and the level of assessment that is required in order to be able to approve developments in principle, it is not possible to make informed comments on the process”.
That was in response to the Government’s technical consultation.
It appears that this is happening based on a fallacy that housing supply is being held back mainly by the need to secure planning permission, which is not happening. There is very little evidence for this. The blockages are mainly market-linked. They are to do with viability, sources of finance, economic demand as opposed to need, extra costs on sites, and predevelopment work such as site clearance and decontamination. They are to do with the habits of development companies, which they deny but which we can all see around us, of land banking: getting planning permission for sites and then sitting on their increased value, which has a beneficial effect on their bottom line; and, in some places, borrowing money on the basis of those sites and spending it somewhere else.
One of the things we have to look at in this PIP business is the boundary between planning in principle and technical details. The Government think that it is very clear: there are just those three things in PIP and everything else is a technical detail. But technical details include flood risk, contamination, community infrastructure, highways and transport, place-making, landscape heritage, design, and all the rest. They are not technical details; they are things that you need to sort out before you give agreement in principle to a site being developed—or at least some them are some of the time.
One of the arguments put forward is that there is duplication in the present system and a repeated test of the principle of development on a site. I have some detailed evidence from my own authority, which may or may not be typical, which said that in the last three years there have been only three refusals of planning applications for housing based on principle. They were all in the green belt, where they would presumably be turned down anyway. There is really very little evidence that this complaint is true.
What can PIP—I think I will call it that—be used for? It was invented last October—that recently—as part of the brownfield sites proposals. Since then, it has been extended in the Bill to the local planning process. The Bill actually says that it can be used for anything, all subject to ministerial regulation through either statutory instruments or development orders. It could be used for anything from industrial estates to fracking. We in this House ought to tighten up the wording on the face of the Bill. There are lots of other things we need to be discussing.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, as the noble Lord has just reminded us, we have at last come to the part of the Bill which deals with permission in principle or, as he has put it “PIP”. This is another form of PIP—following the personal independence payment—which is to be the subject of controversy. I am also reminded, of course, of the character of Mr Pip in Great Expectations which we do not really harbour in relation to this Bill.
What the Government are engaged in is legislation in principle. Members all around the House have complained frequently during Committee about the large number of issues on which the impact assessment was hopelessly inadequate. With even greater vehemence and relevance, they complained about the Bill’s reliance on secondary legislation, drafts of which remain unavailable. An embarrassed, overworked and—it is fair to say—much-admired Minister shares our concerns. However, given the Government’s determination to drive the Bill through as quickly as possible, there is little chance that we will have an opportunity to see—let alone have time properly to consider—how the legislation will work in practice.
On 17 February, two months after the Bill left the Commons, the department issued a 64-page document—the one referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves—containing a “Technical consultation on implementation of planning changes”. Had Michael Gove been Secretary of State, we would at least have seen the definite article before “implementation”. The consultation on this major change to planning policy and practice will end on 15 April. I assume that, on the Government’s rushed timetable, Report will conclude in the following week or, at the latest, the week after. There is therefore no chance that this House will have an opportunity to consider the responses to that consultation, let alone the Government’s reaction to it, before the Bill is enacted. Of course, all this is four or five months after the Bill left the Commons.
One of the Bill’s characteristics, particularly relevant to the clauses we are now discussing, is the increasing number of functions assigned to the Secretary of State. Thus, where an application is made to the local authority, under new Section 59A, the Secretary of State will have the power to set out in a development order the process that local authorities must follow. In relation to technical detailed consent, a development order may—and I emphasise that word—set out the process that must be followed.
The Explanatory Notes helpfully assert that the Government intend to consult on the process in due course. Perhaps the Minister could indicate when this might occur. They also identify a range of issues where the Secretary of State may—or I suppose may not—do a variety of things. New Section 59A provides that development orders will set out how long PIP is valid for and that it may contain transitional arrangements when PIP expires. It empowers the Secretary of State to issue statutory guidance.
Clause 137 sets out a string of powerful new actions which the Secretary of State may take. These include the possibility of requiring the register of brownfield land to be held in two parts—one for brownfield land suitable for housing; the other for a grant of PIP where the local planning authority considers it suitable. To be clear, this is a new form of planning permission, imposed centrally, which deliberately reduces the scope of democratically accountable local decision-making. The next step would presumably be for the function to be entirely in the hands of the Secretary of State or his appointees.
Regulations may provide that the local planning authority is permitted to include land which does not meet all the specified conditions and that the Secretary of State might exercise this power so that the local planning authority could register land suitable for four dwellings or fewer. New subsection (4) sets out what regulations may specify in relation to the register. It gives an example where the Secretary of State may specify that certain descriptions of land are not to be entered into the register. New subsection (4)(c) provides that the Secretary of State may allow for some discretion by the local planning authority—how generous—to exclude land from the register and that he might allow the local planning authority to exercise its discretion in exceptional circumstances. He may also specify by regulation what information should be included in the register or specify descriptions of lands by reference to national policies, advice and guidance. For example, regulations could refer to the definition of previous development land within the National Planning Policy Framework.
Given the plethora of possibilities, could the Minister advise us how many civil servants will be required—and for how long—to produce the detail envisaged by this Government of self-proclaimed localists, ensuring that Whitehall, and not town halls, becomes in effect the local planning authority? How many regulations are likely to emerge from this bureaucratic jungle? Yesterday we received a letter from her—for which we are grateful—enclosing the timetable for consultation, impact statements and the laying of regulations in respect of eight areas of the Bill. None will reach us before Report and there is as yet no timetable for PIP.
Last week, in reference to the Government’s approach, I referred to George Orwell. Today it is Lewis Carroll’s turn because, as ever with this Government, when it comes to legislation it is “Sentence first—verdict afterwards” and, I might add, evidence invisible. This is no way to deal with important legislation about the future of our communities, cities and counties. Members on all sides of the House have expressed concern about the way in which the Government have proceeded. One Conservative Peer, whose identity I will not reveal, approached me last week and said: “You have done well to preserve your sanity over this terrible, terrible housing Bill”. I will not seek to test the opinion of the House on the question of my sanity but the opinion of the Member in question—a thoroughly loyal Conservative Back-Bencher—tells its own story. The hubris exhibited by this Government is beginning to make Margaret Thatcher look like a legislative shrinking violet.
This is exemplified in the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee report of 12 February, to which the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, referred. It is highly critical of Parts 6 to 9 of the Bill and declares that the memorandum,
“seeks to justify a delegation of wide powers … without properly explaining why this is considered appropriate”.
The committee found that,
“references to powers being ‘technical’ or even ‘quasi-technical’”,
were not accurate. It drew attention to the wonderful phrase that one delegated power was the result of,
“a ‘likely shifting matrix of considerations’!”.
Perhaps the Minister could clarify the meaning of these words, but the House will forgive her if she is unable to do so.
In relation to PIP, the committee drew attention to new Section 59A of the 1990 Act, to which I have referred, which would of course be created by this Bill. It points out that the Secretary of State’s power, either for himself or for a local authority, to grant PIP—either by a “qualifying document” or via a “prescribed description”, respectively—would be by negative procedure. This is coupled with an assurance by the Government that a document will be prescribed only if it is made by a public body after going through a robust process—whatever that might mean.
The committee points out that the Secretary of State’s legislation would not bind future Governments, and that new Section 59A should be amended to specify the consultation and other processes involved, and not be left therefore to secondary legislation. The committee notes the Government’s intention to apply PIP to housing-led development, albeit with the possibility of being extended to other developments. On this, the committee points out that the procedure is new and untested, and that no reason has been proffered for a possible extension to non-housing development. Hence its conclusion that the delegation of power under new Section 59A is inappropriate to the extent that it would allow PIP for developments which are not housing-led. All this reinforces the concerns and misgivings widely shared across your Lordships’ House and elsewhere about the excessive reliance on secondary legislation, in respect of which the contents are shrouded in mystery from which the cloak may not be lifted before we reach Report, let alone Third Reading.
Before I turn to the amendments in this, the first of eight or nine groups, it would be sensible if I outlined the Opposition’s view on the overall policy. We clearly support efforts to promote the building of more new homes, for which there is an evident massive need. We are also at one with the Government in wishing to see brownfield sites reclaimed for housing, but also for ancillary and perhaps alternative uses. However, we have major concerns about what will be built in terms of design, space, energy efficiency and affordability. We want to see a range of tenures and, where sites are substantial, we want to see them as not just sites for property development but for the building of communities.
We are conscious of the huge numbers of extant planning permissions to which the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, referred, some of which have been on the shelf for years, while—as my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours has pointed out more than once—land and property prices have soared, producing potential capital gains which, of course, thanks to the Budget, will now extract minimal taxation.
A good deal of concern has been expressed by a wide range of commentators, some of them expressing fears that we may be adopting by default the kind of zoning policy which has led to significant problems in urban America. The Royal Town Planning Institute stresses the need for local communities to have a say through their planning committees in what happens to their area, and that there should be flexibility to exempt certain types of development from PIP while the whole process, including the second stage of technical details consent, should be developed in consultation with planning authorities.
The National Housing Federation welcomes PIP, but cautions that councils should define density, housing and tenure mix in this new “zonal planning system” which could affect,
“people’s democratic rights; and the way we secure high-quality outcomes for people”.
The process will require planning authorities to prepare a register of brownfield sites which, when included in a development order, will grant PIP for the type, amount and location of development. Other sites may be identified in local and neighbourhood plans and “other documents”. Can the Minister tell us what sort of “other documents”, and whether or not, in this category, development will be limited to housing?
Thirdly, and more worryingly, applicants may seek PIP in a process which will restrict the local planning authority’s function to approve or refuse and provide no opportunity for conditions to be imposed. Critically, applications could not be turned down on technical details even if there has been a change in circumstances such as those reflected in Amendment 95, to which we will come in a later group, where, for example, archaeological finds may be discovered. In my own ward, a small housing development is going ahead under the existing procedure after archaeological investigations of the site, which formed part of a civilian vicus near a major fort on the Roman wall. Under the new provisions, had there been any such discovery after PIP had been granted, nothing could be done. Similar concerns could arise about environmental or ecological issues, which the divorce between allocation and detailed permission may exacerbate.
The Town and Country Planning Association points out that the department says that local planning authorities will have a choice of what kind of land will be subject to PIP. However, it is not clear from the addition to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 of new Section 59A(2)(c)—inserted in Clause 136—whether that new section’s reference to an indication that the land is “allocated for development” means that the LPA could, apparently, pick and choose which sites to include. The TCPA points out that this, like so much else, is subject to statutory guidance, and calls for a clear statement from the Secretary of State. Perhaps the Minister could procure this before Report.
London Councils stresses that local authorities should have sufficient flexibility to exempt certain types of development, or certain types of land or areas, from PIP, and that the second stage of technical details consent should be properly thorough and not, in its words, just a,
“truncated prior notification type procedure”.
Can the Minister offer any assurances in that respect? Can she say whether, in relation to housing sites, there will be a limit to the number of houses to be built under PPI? Sorry, I meant to say PIP. I am getting my consonants mixed up. The Government are getting their policies mixed up. A report in Planning Resource in October suggested that PIP would apply to housing schemes of around 500. Is there any indication of the kind of numbers that the Government are expecting to be included in such schemes? Above all, will she dispel the concerns expressed by Hugh Ellis—the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, referred to him—the policy director of the TCPA, that PIP as prescribed in the Bill,
“could apply to all forms of development”,
even for fracking as part of a minerals plan, and whether it is the Government’s intention to adopt US-style zonal plans? Interestingly, in last week’s Budget the Chancellor referred specifically to zonal planning. But perhaps this, like certain other proposals in the Budget, will now be subject to review and, we hope, with a similar outcome. We broadly support the amendments of the noble Lord, Lords Greaves, which list some 19 types of land to be excluded from the process.
Amendment 90 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Kennedy—whose return I very much look forward to—approaches the issue from a different standpoint, restricting PIP to brownfield sites, where it seemed the concept was originally to apply. We support many of the amendments to be moved by other Members in relation to PIP in the groups of amendments which follow, which seek to allow the tailoring of what resembles a one-size-suits-all pre-emptive policy to local needs and aspirations, not only for increasing housing supply but for building well-designed, mixed communities.
Having spoken at some length, I promise your Lordships’ House that I will be brief hereafter as we go into the Bill, and not merely in stature.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, I am confused—or perhaps puzzled—because earlier this afternoon the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, said that the Government’s legislation on localism puts local planning at the heart of the system. Yet what we have heard so far this afternoon about permission in principle seems to be very much at odds with that principle of putting local people and local planning at the heart of what happens in communities. Both the previous speakers, with their knowledge and expertise gained over many years, have understood the Bill’s proposals. I decided to seek to understand what might happen in my own locality as a consequence of this proposal.
It seems there are two possibilities. One is that land that has not previously been allocated in a local plan could be appropriated and allocated as a site with permission to build. Therefore, if a developer needed greenfield land on which to build as opposed to a more difficult brownfield site, the relevant land could be appropriated and given permission in principle regardless of the wishes of the local community. It is of huge concern that the democratic process has been totally disregarded. Anyone who has ever served as a local councillor—as I do—will tell you that the issues which engage local people more than any other are developments taking place on their doorstep as they have such a significant impact on their lives in terms of increased traffic on the roads or the number of children trying to access schools which may already be full. All this sort of thing needs to be considered. Having permission in principle is totally contrary to what we regard as a local planning authority, making local decisions based on a democratic principle.
Having thought of that site, which was appropriating new land, I then wondered if they were thinking about brownfield sites—white land, as we sometimes call it—which want to change their use. I know about one in my ward: a former hotel which has closed. A developer has bought it and wants to develop it. There are huge issues about access, because I live in a hilly part of the country; about the height of the houses and their impact on other local residents; about drainage. You name them, those problems are there. Yet, under this proposal, that site could be allocated for housing development without any consideration of the impact it would have on the neighbouring properties. For those reasons, I am very concerned.
My second concern, which I hope the Minister will be able to give some assurances on, is that, since the 1947 planning Act, we have developed a process of engaging with local people about changes and developments in their area. They have their say; their voice is heard even if, at the end of the day, they do not achieve their outcome. If people feel that they have had a chance to put in their objections and contrary suggestions, they are more likely to be satisfied with the outcome than if they are disregarded and a proposal goes on despite them. I am very concerned that that element of local planning will just disappear under this proposal. If this does come to pass, I will be pointing out to people exactly why it has happened.
The last issue I want to raise is why this proposal has suddenly appeared in the Bill. If it is because developers are putting pressure on the Government about an inadequate supply of land for housing then we ought to look at the evidence, which simply does not support that idea. In my own ward, I have planning consents for over 500 units, 300 of which have had consent for over three years. Nothing is happening because the developers are waiting for property prices to rise. All we will get with permission in principle is more land-banking by developers. Who benefits from that? It is the developers. It is not local people, who will lose opportunities to try and shape their community and have a say in what goes on. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure me on some of these points and will listen to the expert comments and concerns raised earlier.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, the amendment to Clause 136 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, enables us to consider some of the principles of permission in principle. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Lords’ Interests as the chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. When we discussed the principles of the Bill at Second Reading, and in other debates in Committee, I said that we have to keep our eye on the purpose: our capacity to build more homes. If we are successful, through the mechanism of the Bill, in enabling and encouraging more homes to be built, many of the issues we have discussed in Committee will be expedited as a consequence.
Permission in principle is a measure which stands a good chance of enabling us to deliver more homes more quickly. I refer to the example which I gave at Second Reading from my own constituency, which continues to be current and interesting. When it was first proposed, Northstowe, to the north-west of Cambridge, would have been the largest new town built in this country for some 30 years. In 2003, as the local Member of Parliament, I participated in the public examination before the inspector as part of a detailed structure plan inquiry. The purpose of the inquiry was to identify the best location for the establishment of a large new town with some 10,000 homes. The structure plan identified Northstowe as the best location for such a development. It was intended, and subsequently incorporated into local planning, that there would be 6,000 new homes built there by 2016. It is now 2016 and no homes have yet been built. Governments of all political colours always included Northstowe as an example of development potential: the coalition, this Government, the previous Labour Government—Gordon Brown mentioned it when he announced eco-towns. Indeed, Simon Stevens from NHS England included Northstowe as one of the new healthy towns when he talked about them three weeks ago. It is no kind of a town unless we build it: we have to make it happen.
I draw attention to this because the structure plan inquiry went into detail—often exhaustive detail—about the suitability of the location for a development of that size. It looked with great care at the questions which permission in principle is intended to treat as the particulars. What was the location? It was a housing-led development, but what other associated uses were in the master plan? What was the amount of development? What were the density issues? The particulars were all there but, under our existing planning system, the fact that so much had been, as we understood it, agreed in the structure plan did not make any difference to the amount of cost, complexity and time that needed to be absorbed by the lead developers to bring this through to even an outline planning application. As noble Lords will understand, that is before the point at which they go on to the full planning application which follows.
What is intended here is very straightforward. Under such a set of circumstances, where major sites for housing development are contemplated and there is a local or neighbourhood planning process or an appropriate register as a qualifying document, we should go from three processes to two. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is right that the balance and the boundary between those two things is important. However, the implication of what he was saying was that, because the Government identify three particulars as the basis on which the development order will be granted, those particulars therefore exclude, by definition, some of the issues which enable the particulars to be determined.
Lord Greaves
My understanding, having read the technical consultation, is that that is exactly the position. One thing we have to tease out is the exact stage at which the detailed investigations into and the related decisions about particular sites take place under the new system. We all agree that while they should not take place three times, they should take still place. However, there does not seem to be anything in the new system that says they will unless they are carried out and paid for by the local planning authority. That is unacceptable.
Lord Lansley
I understand the noble Lord’s point, and he is quite right that we have to tease this out. My noble friend will tell me if I am wrong, but, as I understand it, a qualifying document must be based on a suitable process for establishing how the particulars have been arrived at. For example, where a site is allocated under a local plan for housing development, as part of the process, the local planning authority will go through what I hope will be a rigorous process—I think we all know it will be—with time to examine, for example, whether it is in a flood plain and, if so, what the mitigation would be. It might also examine whether the development is environmentally sustainable and whether, from the point of view of the local highways authority, issues arise from development on a large scale.
We have to be clear whether the local plan process enables a suitable site for housing development to be included in a local plan and thereby gives rise to the potential for permission in principle being granted. This does not mean that a subsequent environmental impact assessment will have to be done on the site at that point. It means that when either that assessment or the highway authority’s response to a plan’s technical details takes place, the question will not be whether the site is right in principle but whether the assessments necessitate mitigation measures. I hope that the Government make it so that there are three processes instead of two and that the qualifying documents in the first process giving rise to permission in principle are sufficiently robust.
I have an additional question about the relationship between permission in principle and current local plan processes. A significant number of local and neighbourhood plans were made and adopted following the publication of the National Planning Policy Framework and many local authorities will adopt those plans in the months following Royal Assent. Will they automatically be eligible for permission in principle through a development order? If so, how can we be confident that the necessary and rigorous processes that should be the basis for the granting of such permission have been gone through, such that local authorities are not required to go through the outline planning application processes? That relationship is very important. I hope that we can make local plans rigorous so that permission in principle can, through development orders, be applied to suitable sites.
Why do I say that? In my experience as a Member of Parliament for an area with a great deal of planning activity, I found that local communities often did not give the attention they should to, or were not engaged to the extent that they ought to be in, understanding the importance of the local plan or local development framework. We need that to happen. Permission in principle has the ancillary benefit that it will cause it to happen much more.
How often have those of us involved in these matters found that when a planning proposal with the potential for an outline planning application was brought forward, people affected began to organise on the basis that that was their moment to be heard? But in a plan-led process, that is not the moment. Instead, it is when the local plan is being put together—but that is a big process and people find it difficult to intervene. We need to ensure that people are clear about the overriding importance of local plans. If they know that a site for housing development may be granted permission in principle as a consequence of its incorporation into a neighbourhood or local plan, they are far more likely to get involved in making that happen.
Lord Stunell
I absolutely accept the points that the noble Lord is making about the difficulty of engaging local communities and the fact that they arrive at this process far too late. Could he say a little more about how PIP will accelerate that? The concern on these Benches is that it will leapfrog the normal process, however inadequate it is.
Lord Lansley
It is probably more for my noble friend the Minister to explain how the processes work. My point is simple: it is said that permission in principle is inimical to a local planning authority’s processes or democratic input, but that is not the case. It should prompt a much greater involvement on the part of local people. It should also focus the local planning authority on engaging with the people they represent, not only to ensure that there is a plan-led system, but so that it is understood that the local plan will in many instances give rise to permission in principle. That will cause people to engage with a local plan more than they have previously. For that and other reasons, I support Clause 136 and permission in principle.
Baroness Pinnock
Following on from what the noble Lord said—although perhaps the Minister will put us right—my understanding is that permission in principle has two routes. One is through the local and neighbourhood plan. Giving permission in principle is really what such plans do. It is the second route that I am concerned about. Through this route, an application can be made directly to the local planning authority for a site that may not have already been allocated for development—if it had been, it would be in the local plan. That is my concern with this proposal. If it just said that sites allocated in a local plan have, by the very nature of their being in a local plan, permission in principle, I could probably live with it. I am concerned about the second area, and I hope that I will get answers and reassurances.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, I wish the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, a speedy recovery and I am glad to hear that he is back on his feet. Although he is not the greatest fan of the Bill, it has been a great pleasure discussing it with him.
I want to make a point about the letter that noble Lords received on the secondary legislation. I sense from the Benches opposite that some have it and others do not. I will think about what the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said about placing copies in the Printed Paper Office. I am sure that we can do that in future. I also have a couple of copies with me, if noble Lords would like to see it. I was absolutely determined that the letter would be with noble Lords, and it is a shame that difficulties with offices being spread thinly have prevented it. In future I will put copies in the Printed Paper Office.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I thank the Minister for that. It is a strain trying to do a Bill four days running. We cannot keep up with it. By putting it in the PPO, which is very effective and efficient, we all have access to shared information. So I thank her.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Baroness is very welcome. We learn these things as we go along. I also confirm to noble Lords that I will be responding to the DPRRC report tomorrow, as well as giving my intentions for Report. That said, I will go through the whole principle of permission in principle, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, did. It is a measure that responds to issues raised by representatives from the housebuilding and professional planning sectors about the lack of predictability and efficiency in our current planning system, which noble Lords have alluded to, in two specific key areas.
First, the current system requires applicants to invest heavily upfront in the finer details of the scheme without sufficient certainty that the site is “in principle” suitable for that type of development. This can waste time and effort for local authorities which have to determine detailed applications that may not be suitable in principle, and for communities and other consultees that are asked to comment. In August 2015, the Planning Officers Society released a discussion paper on this very issue, which states that,
“the costs associated with submitting applications for outline planning permission, with all its information requirements, can be significant for small and medium builders. This, coupled with no guarantee of success, can deter small and medium businesses from putting forward sites into the planning system. This needs to be resolved”.
Secondly, the current system allows “in principle” decisions to be revisited at multiple points in the process. I am sure we have all seen this. Even where land is allocated in a local plan, decision-makers will reassess the basic principles of site suitability when a planning application is submitted. This means that the hard work and local effort that go in at the plan-making stage are often revisited and repeated at the development management stage. On this point, when giving evidence about the Bill in the other place, the Home Builders Federation said of planning applications:
“Unfortunately, I can point you to many, many examples of where the principle of development gets discussed at length even for an allocated site”.
I also take this opportunity to highlight that the Lyons review, published in spring last year, also identified that the principle of development should be established earlier.
Clause 136, which my noble friend Lord Lansley referred to, responds to these issues by introducing permission in principle: a new type of planning consent that will provide upfront certainty that the fundamental principles of development—the use, location and amount of development—are agreed and established once in the planning process. This will give increased certainty that a type and amount of development is acceptable in principle before significant investment is made in costly technical matters. However, permission in principle must be followed by an application for “technical details consent” before full planning permission is granted and work can start on-site. This will provide the opportunity to assess the detailed design and to ensure appropriate mitigation of impacts and that the contribution to infrastructure is secured.
Clause 136 will enable permission in principle to be granted in two ways. The first is on sites that local planning authorities, parishes and neighbourhood forums choose and allocate within their local plan-making process. It will strengthen plan-led development in this country and increase the efficiency of the system by ensuring that the hard work that goes into local plan production and site allocation is put to best use.
I stress that the choice about where to grant permission in principle will be a local one, reached through the rigorous involvement of communities and members of the current plan-making process and not through the Secretary of State. Far from removing a community’s voice from planning decisions, permission in principle will strengthen the role of the local plan and help ensure that housing development takes place on sites that people actually want to see built. Where permission in principle is granted through neighbourhood plans, this will truly ensure that communities are in the driving seat of local planning.
To meet the specific challenges faced by smaller developers, Clause 136 will provide a second route for permission in principle to be granted by enabling applicants to make an application to the local planning authority for a minor development. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, referred to this. This will ensure that smaller builders can test the acceptability of a scheme before having to invest heavily in the technical detail that may go to waste if the development is not acceptable in principle.
Baroness Andrews
I thought it was worth interrupting the Minister at this point because of the definition of “technical details”. If we can get that straight, it might save a lot of discussion later on. Does “technical details” mean the NPPF or is it less than the NPPF? In Fixing the Foundations the Chancellor talked about,
“a limited number of technical details”.
Does she have a list of those technical details? I think we would all benefit from genuine clarity about that at this point.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, when setting out the local plan, local authorities will have to be clear on things such as environmental mitigation and flood risk—all the various things that would usually be considered. If noble Lords have suggestions for what should be included in the technical details stage of the process, I would be very grateful. I thought the noble Baroness was going to mention something entirely different because we talked the other day about sites of archaeological interest. Of course, such things have to be considered in terms of the NPPF anyway. But if she thinks there are additional things that should be included at the technical details stage, I am very happy to listen and take them on board.
Lord Greaves
That is very helpful but I think what is concerning people is not what additional material considerations there may be for planning applications or the new system, it is which of the existing ones the new system will miss out. Will anything that is a material consideration for a planning permission at the moment, whether it is a full permission or reserved matters or whatever, still be a material consideration under the PIP technical details system?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I assure the noble Lord that absolutely it will. The rigour that exists in the current planning system will be the rigour that exists through permission in principle. All the permission in principle system does is create a lesser financial burden upfront for builders, particularly small builders, which might want to build developments. It saves the upfront money knowing that they have the “in principle” go-ahead to pursue it further. I assure the noble Lord that none of the rigour that exists now will be diminished or diluted in the permission in principle system. I hope that that reassures him.
Lord Stunell
Can the Minister indicate to the House whether the Government have a particular ceiling in mind for what a minor project consists of, which might otherwise be somewhat in the eye of the beholder in this debate and might lead us into confusion?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I am making an assumption here, but I would say that a minor scheme would be one with no more than a few dwellings on it. It would certainly not be a large scheme, which is currently designated as more than 10 dwellings, so perhaps one or two houses; no more than that. In fact, it might be just one dwelling.
I can also assure noble Lords that the technical details must be negotiated and agreed before developments can start, so in terms of the rigour of the planning process, they cannot be agreed afterwards. They have to be agreed before the development can go ahead.
Lord Greaves
I am a bit confused by the Minister’s language. When she said that they should be negotiated before the development starts, does that mean that permission is given by the local planning authority as if it was a reserved matter?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Yes, it would be. The development cannot go ahead unless the technical details have been agreed. It is an essential part of the process, just as it is under the current system.
Perhaps I may finish my opening remarks by reminding noble Lords of what the sector has made of our proposals since the Bill was published back in October. The Federation of Master Builders strongly supports them, and it believes in particular that the application route for minor developments will help to reduce the barriers to bringing forward small-scale housing development. In its evidence to the committee scrutinising the Bill, the Home Builders Federation said that Clause 136 would definitely increase supply because it is,
“a positive step towards finding the sites that local authorities actually want to see developed”.
I hope that I have been able to demonstrate briefly that permission in principle is a much-needed measure that is supported by the sector. It aims to introduce more predictability and efficiency into our system for locally supported development.
The noble Lords, Lord Beecham and Lord Greaves, talked about fracking. I should just like to make the point at this juncture that fracking sites are precisely the type of development that would not be suitable for permission in principle; they are simply at the other end of the scale. We are talking here about housing-led sites, so I shall say on the Floor of the House that fracking is not the sort of thing that we are thinking about. However, I know that noble Lords like to have it confirmed again and again, and I do not blame them.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, asked about the number of dwellings. The number will be determined through the local plan derived via consultation with the local community. He also asked about archaeological sites. If, say, a new dead king was found under a site, making it a site of great archaeological interest, it is fair to say that the technical details consent would be refused at that point.
Baroness Andrews
The noble Baroness may be inciting me to withdraw my amendment, because some archaeological sites can be mitigated rather than withdrawn, but that mitigation requires the permission in principle to be changed because the mitigation can happen only, for example, by reducing the minimum number of houses. What happens then?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Baroness is absolutely right that the archaeological aspect of a site could be mitigated. Perhaps we will move on to that issue later, but I thought I would mention it, given that she is sitting in front of me. It might be a good example.
A few noble Lords talked about local development orders. We will get on to those in a later group, but I want to make the point at this juncture that local development orders are quite different from permission in principle, because they are tools that local authorities use to grant detailed planning permission for a specific development within a defined area, such as unlocking problematic sites and playing a vital role in regeneration. I thought I would make the point, because it has been mentioned.
Amendments 89N and 92D, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, seek to place in the Bill an exclusion on certain sites from benefiting from a grant of permission in principle. Let me simply reaffirm the following truth: the Bill enables permission in principle to be granted for development on sites chosen by local authorities and neighbourhood forums. If a local authority considers that a site is suitable for housing-led development in line with local and national policy, it will be able to use permission in principle to help to ensure that such sites are delivered.
Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)
Perhaps I may ask the Minister about a point that has been puzzling me. Does the duty to co-operate between local authorities remain as it is under their current system?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Yes, my Lords. Indeed, I would reinforce the point that the duty to co-operate, particularly on larger sites, is even more important, given the buy-in by local communities of two different local authorities. Does that answer the noble Lord’s question?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Perhaps I may reaffirm that if a local authority considers that a site is suitable for housing-led development in line with local and national policy, it will be able to use the permission in principle to help to ensure that the site gets delivered. The NPPF already provides strong protections for the type of sites listed in these amendments, including the green belt, the historic and the natural environment. At its heart, the framework is clear that local authorities should plan positively to meet each of the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. For example, paragraph 157 sets out that plans should identify land where development would be inappropriate and contain a clear strategy for enhancing the natural built and historic environment. Permission in principle does not change any of these existing protections. Local and national policy has always driven how local decisions are made, and the addition of a new route to obtaining planning permission does not change that. I suggest that setting out centrally what type of land may or may not be granted permission in principle would set an unwelcome precedent.
Noble Lords have tabled a number of amendments to Clause 136 that seek to restrict permission in principle to be granted for housing development only. Amendment 90, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is part of the group. Although I understand the desire to add more detail to the legislation at this stage, there are important reasons why it would be unwise to restrict the granting of permission in principle to housing development in the Bill. First, and most importantly, if we restrict permission in principle to housing only, we lose the crucial ability to facilitate mixed-use development. We are currently consulting on an approach that would enable permission in principle to be granted for housing-led development to allow for the possibility of mixed uses that are compatible with a residential environment. This means that as long as a site allocation is housing-led, local authorities will be able to grant permission in principle in line with local and national policy for other uses.
Lord Beecham
I will not ask the Minister to do so now, but will there be a definition in guidance about what housing-led actually means in terms of proportions of sites and so on?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Yes, my Lords. I can give an example of what that might include. It may be a retail community and office space. This approach is absolutely crucial to continuing to promote sustainable development and the delivery of balanced, mixed communities, spaces and places in line with the principles set out in the NPPF. We are currently consulting on this approach and we would welcome views about what would constitute a suitable proportion of housing and the compatible uses, in line with the noble Lord’s pre-emptive question. This will allow us to set out a sensible definition of housing-led development in secondary legislation.
Amendment 90 would also restrict the granting of permission in principle to brownfield sites only. I want to remind the Committee that the Bill will enable permission in principle to be granted to sites identified on the new brownfield register specifically to help to ensure that development takes place on these priority sites. We also intend to enable permission in principle to be granted on sites chosen and allocated by local authorities, parishes and neighbourhood forums within their local and neighbourhood plans. Restricting the granting of permission in principle to only brownfield sites in this context would greatly reduce the effectiveness of this measure and the freedom for local agreement on where development should take place as part of the plan-led approach.
Finally, my noble friend Lord Lansley asked whether new plans could automatically be considered for PIP. Once the secondary legislation is in place, our newly adopted plan could grant permission in principle. The choice about whether it should be granted will be a local one. I hope that, with those words, the noble Lord will feel happy to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I am grateful for the care with which the Minister has answered and taken part in the discussion on these amendments. Inevitably a great deal of what she said was explaining the proposals rather than engaging with some of the arguments put forward, although she engaged with quite a few.
The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, made an interesting point about emerging plans. We will discuss this later, but it is clear that the Government do not intend that permission in principle should be retrospective. However, there are plans at the moment that may not—and if they are very close to adoption, will not—have been put together with an understanding that permission in principle might come from them. There is an interesting debate to be had in a later group about that.
The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, also mentioned flood plains. In a sense, this underlines the difficulty behind the permission in principle and technical details concept. Is the liability of land to flood on a flood plain or indeed in any other circumstances a matter to be sorted out before permission in principle is given or not? Should it be sorted out at local plan level? If there is an application for permission in principle outside the local plan, direct to the authority, who sorts it out and at what stage? One of the concerns of local planning authorities is that the work on assessing the problem, assessing what needs doing, designing mitigation methods and so on may be transferred from the applicant—the developer—to the local authority. Most of the work involved in putting a local plan together, such as the strategic housing land availability assessment and other such documents, is done by and paid for by the local authority.
In terms of planning applications, one of the complaints seems to be that developers—applicants—have to spend a lot of money at an early stage when they are not sure if their application is going to get passed. I am not quite sure how you get away from that, but if a local authority says that it cannot give permission in principle on land because it is a flood plain, it will have to have evidence to show that—not least if it goes to appeal. To get that evidence, it will have to do the work and show that mitigation is not possible. There is a real problem. Is this a device for transferring the cost of doing work before an application can be agreed from the developer to the local authority? If it is, there are obvious problems, which I think we can discuss in later groups.
Otherwise, I am pretty grateful to the Minister for what she has said and I will have a happy time over the Recess reading it all. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves
My Lords, this is a miscellaneous group relating to planning in principle. In moving Amendment 90ZA, I will speak to the rest of the amendments in my name in the group. Amendment 90ZA and two other amendments in this group relate specifically to the term “technical details”. Noble Lords will know that I take an interest in what things are called. I think that it is important for the way in which they are regarded. “Technical details” seems to me to be the wrong name. They suggest a formality, either right or wrong, or yes or no, like building regulations—non-controversial, technical and able to be the subject of tick lists.
It is becoming clear from the discussions that “technical details” in the case of planning in principle will include a great deal more than that. They will include things that are debateable and arguable and they will require a lot of evidence from both sides. Also, when a local authority makes a decision, it will be subject to appeal. “Technical details” seems to me to be a source of confusion and misunderstanding and have a lack of clarity for the public. When people are told that their objection about access to the site through their estate or the impact that it is going to have on the local landscape is just a technical detail, I think they will get quite angry. Therefore, because it seems a more sensible name and because I always want to help the Government in these matters, I suggest that they should be called “development details”, which is a clear, simple and obvious name for them.
The Bill says that when there is an application for permission in principle—in other words, getting a PIP directly through the local authority and not through a document—the local planning authority may grant the planning in principle or may refuse it. It suggests that there are no circumstances in which local authorities could grant it with conditions. This is causing a lot of bemusement in the planning world. Amendments 94ZB and 94ZC are to probe this and say,
“they may grant permission … with conditions”,
but,
“any conditions imposed … may only relate to matters that are material to the granting of permission of principle”.
It seems rather drastic to say that, in relation to the area, the amount of housing or indeed other uses of the site, the local authority is not able, perhaps after discussion and negotiation with the applicants, to put conditions on in the normal way.
The present planning system is not anti-development; it is actually very pro-development. One thing that applicants often complain about that is not to their benefit is that there can be a great deal of negotiation after the initial pre-application discussions with the local planning authority. There will be perhaps negotiation as it is going through the system and the final result may be different from what was proposed at the beginning, but the result will be that planning permission is given.
The whole impetus now within the local planning system is that, when a planning application comes in, it gets permission. Therefore, what the local planning authority is doing and what the planners are doing very often during that process, in negotiations with the applicants, are the things necessary to make it possible to give that planning permission—and it goes to committee to make a recommendation for that. To say that you can simply pass it or kick it out seems to me a recipe for having more refusals than we do now. If there are things that people think need negotiating and changing, it will not be possible to do it—and having conditions is a way to do that.
Finally, conditions on an outline planning approval will mean that the permission given will say something like, “This permission is given subject to reserved matters, which are as follows”, or it may say that all the matters are reserved, but it will give outline planning permission subject to subsequent agreement about the reserved matters. What is now being said is that the planning in principle will be given but there will be a list of parameters set for a subsequent application for technical details. I do not understand what the difference is between an outline planning permission and a permission in principle in those circumstances and I do not understand what the difference is between reserved matters and parameters. Perhaps the Minister can elucidate what parameters mean and what they are all about. Will the parameters set out be mandatory on technical details? Will there be things that have to be sorted out at that stage? What happens if perfectly good objections arise to a proposal at technical detail stage that have not been thought about at planning and principle stage? Will it be impossible to consider these other things, which members or local groups or even councillors may bring up and which may be valid and obvious things that need to be sorted out before the application can be dealt with? Will they be banned from being dealt with if they are not in the list of parameters—if they are not in the parameter of parameters that have been agreed at the first stage?
With Amendment 94B, I am just trying to be helpful, as the Bill as it is written at the moment does not make sense. It would make an amendment to Section 70 of the Town and Country Planning Act. Perhaps somebody could look at it.
Amendment 94ZA is all about guidance. For heaven’s sake, we are going to have lots of regulation-making powers by the Secretary of State, then we are going to have all the powers of the Secretary of State to make development orders under the Town and Country Planning Act, which will set out most of the rules and regulations for local authorities. In addition to that, we have this ridiculous paragraph saying:
“Local planning authorities must have regard to any guidance issued by the Secretary of State in the exercise of functions exercisable by virtue of this section”.
If the Secretary of State issues guidance, people will pay attention to it—obviously they will. But putting it in legislation like that is an insult to local planning authorities, to councils, to planners and to councillors. It is treating them like children; it is just pathetic. However, that is just an outburst on my part. The other amendments in this group are more substantial. I beg to move.
Baroness Andrews
My Lords, I intervene briefly to support quite a lot of what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has just said. This business of language is absolutely critical. Part of the problem is the splitting of what is now a holistic process through the discretionary system that we have into two arbitrary divisions. That is what the Bill proposes, and that is why the distinction between the two parts of the process and the language is absolutely critical, as is understanding where the boundaries lie and whether they are in any way permeable or whether they are fixed. The technical detail to describe the infrastructure, contamination, substance or transport is not correct or appropriate. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has got it right when he talks about development, because they are all aspects of development, but I ask the Minister and officials to think really hard about the proper language here.
The other issues that have been raised are about the flexibility, and we will come on to that in later amendments. What we have is a cliff edge at the end of the first stage on the three criteria, which are very blunt—location, land use and amount. The rest is about how it works. Unless we are clear that there is no way that anything that is discovered that cannot be known, because no site investigation will have been required—in many instances none will have been done—and unless we know whether there is any way in which to alter the PIP, or unless conditions are attached to the PIP, the only choice is to reject the planning application as a whole. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is quite right—that means that we may end up getting fewer sites agreed than under the present system. This is an extremely important set of amendments and some very important issues have been raised.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, I support the point just made that language is very important in this matter, but I am slightly disturbed by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, saying that the language is too simple and talks down to people. What does it matter if the planning officers find it all so simple? I am a great believer that ordinary people should be able to understand the law. Therefore, it should be in as simple a form as possible and we should not worry about who feels that they are being talked down to. We have just had two conflicting statements on that, but I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, that language is important.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I, too, agree that language is important and what might be talking down to one person might feel incredibly complex to another, particularly when it comes to planning, which lies outside the interest of most people and is of interest only when it affects them.
The effect of Amendments 90ZA, 95ZA, and 95BA, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is to replace “technical details consent” with “development details consent” to reflect his wish that applications following the grant of permission in principle should be determined in accordance with the existing rules relating to planning applications under Part 3 of the Town and Country Planning Act. I share his desire to ensure that an application that follows a grant of permission in principle includes a robust process that allows for consideration of development against local and national policy. We have set out our wish for an application for technical details consent to strike the right balance between securing such a process, while minimising unnecessary duplication at the permission in principle and technical details consent stages. We are currently consulting on how to get this balance right, and asking key questions about important matters such as information provision and involvement of communities and others.
Amendment 92HA allows me to explain the difference between permission in principle and local development orders. I apologise to noble Lords that I am slightly repeating myself, because I have just made this point in the previous group, but it is important to say again that local development orders are tools that local authorities use to grant detailed planning permission to specific development within a defined area. They are a particularly useful tool in unlocking problematic sites and play a vital role in regeneration. Local development orders and neighbourhood development orders will still have a role in allowing a local planning authority or neighbourhood groups to grant a more detailed planning permission for specific sites.
On Amendment 94ZA, we have taken a power to issue statutory guidance on the new system of permission in principle. We think that this is an important power as it will allow us to make clear to local authorities, developers, statutory bodies and the general public how the new system should work. The guidance will also help to make permission in principle fully accessible to all users, thereby placing strong expectations on how, where and in what circumstances permission in principle can be granted.
I turn to Amendment 94ZB. New Section 70(1A) as introduced by the Government will enable local authorities to refuse or approve an application for permission in principle. The amendment suggested by the noble Lord effectively removes the ability to make an application for permission in principle to the local planning authority. As I set out in my opening remarks, Clause 136 enables applicants to apply directly to their local authority for permission in principle and it is important to have this route, alongside being able to obtain it through a local plan, a neighbourhood plan or the brownfield register. Our intention is to make this option available for applications for minor development, specifically to help address the particular challenges faced by smaller developers, who often find that the cost of providing swathes of technical detail up front prevents them from entering the development market.
One of the ways that we can help to address this chronic housing shortage is by diversifying the housebuilding sector and encouraging small and medium builders and custom builders into the market. The permission in principle application route aims to help achieve exactly that, offering a route for smaller builders and even custom builders who can seldom afford to waste money on detailed planning information for sites that are unacceptable in principle to gain more upfront certainty and reduce the risk for them to enter the market. The permission in principle application route will be optional for applicants and will sit alongside other routes for securing planning permission. Permission in principle will be determined by local authorities in accordance with the development plan for the area unless material considerations indicate otherwise. We will be setting out minimum statutory requirements for consultation when an application for permission in principle is made to ensure that the local community and the statutory agencies are consulted before it is granted, closely following the existing requirements during the planning application process. In no way will the permission in principle application provide a route for applicants to push through unacceptable proposals. Instead it will be hugely beneficial to the SME market and could play an important role in helping to diversify the housing market.
Turning now to Amendment 94ZC, I am thankful to the noble Lord for his comments on how decisions to grant permission in principle are made. However, I do not think it is appropriate that permission in principle should be granted subject to conditions, because permission in principle is to provide simple certainty on the basic acceptability of the site early on in the process. As the permission in principle does not on its own authorise development, conditions at this point would unnecessarily complicate the process, although we expect local authorities to make clear when they give permission in principle the matters that they would expect to see covered in an application for the technical details consent, and we are currently consulting on how best to achieve this. The technical details consent application will provide the opportunity for the local authority to determine all further matters of the development in line with the local plan and other material considerations, subject to conditions. This is the appropriate time to impose conditions on how a scheme is to be delivered.
On Amendment 94B, I agree with the proposals put forward in the noble Lord’s amendment. That is why, in response, I draw attention to page 157 and more specifically to paragraph 11(2) of Schedule 12, which already makes the changes the noble Lord seeks to make with this amendment. I thank him once again for this debate and, in light of my comments, ask that he withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Andrews
On the last point the Minister raised, when the permission in principle is allocated the local authority must advise the applicant what will be covered by the notion of technical details. It seems to me that much of what is driving this Bill is a concern for SMEs, possibly more than large developers. But SMEs will not have gone through the plan. They are bringing their applications forward, so they may have an eye on a site but they may not have any idea what that site is like. They certainly will not have done a site assessment. How, therefore, can the local authority be certain of the advice that it is going to give to that small builder about the technical details to be covered? As we keep saying, we do not want to waste money. That is part of the present system, so we are told. But surely there is a possibility that a small builder will engage with a site only to find that he cannot deliver because he cannot deal with the technical details which will be given to him at a later stage.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Baroness raises a vital point. The lack of some upfront costs will help the smaller builder because knowing what will be expected of him or her later down the process could enable that smaller builder to make a decision on whether or not to proceed with that application. I hope that that is helpful to the noble Baroness.
Baroness Andrews
It does depend on the local authority and the small builder knowing what they are looking for. It may be, if it is a site that nobody knows about, that they will not know what they are looking for. This is one instance where, if we had the consultation and the response of people who are going to manage this, we would be in a much better position to know whether this is safe or not.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I hope the noble Baroness will engage with the consultation. In fact, her words tonight will form part of the consultation. All noble Lords’ suggestions are being taken forward to help shape policy.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, the problem is that getting permission in principle will not provide certainty. All it will provide is certainty that you can go on to the next stage where the hard work will have to be done and paid for and the application might be turned down. The Minister keeps talking about the fact that conditions can be put on and applications can be amended at the technical details stage. That is absolutely right but they can also be thrown out, and the problem that some of us, including the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, are trying to grasp is that some of the things which will be discussed at technical details stage are regarded as something that should be discussed at outline planning stage. They are matters of principle such as the question of whether you can get proper safe access to the site and the matter of ecology on the site. The proposal that has been put forward is that you can get planning permission in principle for such a site but then there are technical details that have to be dealt with, so it does not stop the cost. It might even cost small builders more because they are being led down the garden path with permission in principle and then they are being stopped when they get to the privy at the bottom, whereas at the moment they would be stopped halfway down the garden path. So this needs to be thought out.
As a ward councillor I am currently engaged peripherally in discussions for a small planning application for about 24 houses. The development has had full planning permission but the developers decided it was not viable as set out so they have come back with a changed application. Discussions are now taking place which are delaying the whole thing, but the purpose is to get it passed in the end. Some of the discussions are taking place because residents in nearby flats, assisted by me and other councillors, are complaining about some of the properties just behind them being too high and too big. Meanwhile, the developer is saying that it is still not viable and they want another one. So discussions are taking place at the moment on the minor detail of changing the design of one of the houses, perhaps putting another house in a corner where there is not one.
Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I submitted some of the amendments in this group before I got further information by reading the technical consultation and implementation, which I will come to. I shall speak also to the other amendments in my name in this group. These amendments are mainly about timescales and time limitations, which is why they have been grouped. There is a very helpful Labour amendment in the middle of the group.
Amendments 90A, 95C and two others refer to the prescribed period. Amendment 90A is a probing amendment to find the Government’s idea of what the prescribed period should be for after permission in principle is given on a piece of land but before technical details have to be given, otherwise the permission in principle may lapse. I have suggested three years, which is the present position for outline planning permission and reserved matters. Since I tabled the amendment, I have been able to see the technical consultation which talks about a different timescale, and I hope noble Lords will let me raise this as it is important.
The maximum determination period for permission in principle on application and technical details consent is how long the local authority has to process and determine applications. At the moment, it is essentially eight weeks for ordinary applications and 13 weeks for major applications. The proposed determination periods that are being consulted on are five weeks for permission in principle for minor applications, five weeks for technical details consent for minor sites and 10 weeks for technical details consent for major sites. There is considerable concern about these proposals and these timescales. I apologise to the Minister, who will not have answers on these specific things, but I want to put them on the record.
I have a comment from my planning manager in Pendle. He says:
“If there is to be meaningful consultation the timescales involved are unworkable and will lead to many applications being rejected. A significant number of applications need amending or further clarifying information needs to be prepared. This requirement often comes from the comments of consultees who normally take the full 21 days to respond”.
Consultees are Highways England, the Environment Agency, the Coal Authority and the rest of them.
“The processing of an application and registration takes two days and letters sent out to consultees. They will get the letters in the first week. There are then three weeks for consultation. That leaves 1 week to deal with all the issues that are brought up. If there are outstanding matters”—
and my experience is that there usually are—
“which there will inevitably be, LPAs will refuse consent rather than allow something that is potentially unacceptable.
Timescales need to be more realistic or the process will fall down with impossible to achieve timescales”.
The Minister said that our comments will be fed into the consultation, so I hope those comments will be fed in.
Amendment 93A states that PIP cannot be retrospective, and I think the Government agree that that is the case, so perhaps I will not pursue it. Amendment 92N probes the circumstances in which the Secretary of State can grant PIP instead of the LPA. Amendment 93A also states:
“The procedure to be followed for the readoption or revision of a qualifying document in a way that affects the granting of permission in principle to any land is the same as that which applies to the original adoption of the document”.
The purpose of that provision is to probe whether, after the document has been adopted with all the public consultation and processes which it appears are being promised, it could then be changed in some way on the sly without all that process taking place again.
Amendment 93B is about whether permission in principle will cease to have effect on land. If planning permission is given for a different use, does the housing PIP then lapse or does it stand alongside a new permission for, say, a supermarket? If land is allocated for a different use or has the allocation for housing removed in the local development plan, does the planning in principle lapse if the local development plan is changed? If land is removed from the list of land suitable for housing development or the register of brownfield land, does that mean that the planning in principle is also removed at the same time?
Amendment 93C is about how applications for planning permission will work on land which already has planning in principle for housing. If it has permission in principle for housing, and somebody puts in a planning application for a supermarket, a garage site or whatever, will that simply operate on the same lines as it would if that permission in principle did not exist? If the permission in principle for the supermarket, the garage site or whatever is then granted, does the planning in principle for housing lapse or does it continue to exist alongside? I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I rise with, I promise, uncharacteristic brevity to speak to Amendments 93 and 96, which are tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Kennedy. These amendments relate to time. Amendment 93 relates to new Section 59A(4), which states:
“Permission in principle … takes effect when the qualifying document is adopted”,
and, critically, goes on to say in new paragraph (b) that it,
“is not brought to an end by the qualifying document ceasing to have effect or being revised, unless the order provides otherwise”,
which strikes me as somewhat peculiar provision. My amendment would ensure that the provision in principle expired when the plan was no longer relevant or had been replaced. It limits the time to circumstances when it remains relevant or has not been replaced.
Amendment 96 again relates to the time factor, because the somewhat convoluted proposed new subsection (2ZZC) says:
“Subsection (2ZZA) does not apply where … the permission in principle has been in force for longer than a prescribed period”.
That is what the Bill currently says. The amendment seeks to put a limit on that period of five years, so there would have to be development within a five-year period. That seems perfectly reasonable given what we already know about the vast number of outstanding permissions which are not acted on, and which therefore of course do not contribute to meeting housing or indeed any other needs.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, the effect of all four Amendments 90A, 95C, 96ZB and 96 would be to put a timeframe in the Bill to allow local authorities to reopen the principle of development when determining an application for technical details consent after a permission in principle has been in place for three years.
Proposed new Section 70(2ZZC), as introduced by the Government, will give local authorities the ability to re-examine the principle of development when a permission in principle has been in place for longer than a set period and where there has been a material change in circumstance. I assure noble Lords that we intend to set out a suitable period for when the principle of development could be reconsidered in secondary legislation. We are currently consulting on the duration of a permission in principle granted either on allocation in a plan or on application to a local authority. To set the duration of permission in principle in secondary legislation rather than in the Bill is a prudent approach, because it gives us a better opportunity to ensure that this model works as intended and for the Secretary of State to keep it under review and respond as appropriate.
Amendment 92J would have the effect of removing the ability to prescribe the type of development that can be granted permission in principle in secondary legislation and—taken with some of the other amendments tabled by the noble Lord to this clause—would limit permission in principle to housing development only. Once again, I understand the desire to place detail in the Bill. However, as I have already set out, there are important reasons why permission in principle should not be restricted in this way. The power that Amendment 92N seeks to remove is there simply to ensure that permission in principle is consistent with the existing system. This is important as it minimises complexity, and for this reason, I ask the noble Lord to consider not moving this amendment.
On Amendment 93, I will briefly explain to noble Lords our intentions behind proposed new subsection (4)(b) in Clause 136 on the duration of permission in principle. We have no intention of allowing permission in principle to exist in perpetuity. We are intent on setting out a sensible duration and are currently consulting on the option of setting that limit at five years. Proposed new subsection (4)(b) would give us important flexibility to ensure that, in appropriate circumstances, where a plan or a register is more regularly revised or updated, it does not automatically mean that permission in principle comes to an end.
Lord Beecham
Did I hear the Minister correctly? She indicates that she is thinking of a five-year period, but how would that be provided for? It does not seem to be in the Bill—will it be a matter for regulation, and whence would that authority derive?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord is right; as I just said, we are currently consulting on setting the limit at five years. Does that answer the noble Lord’s question or am I answering a totally different one?
Lord Beecham
Does the Minister mean that she is thinking about a government amendment to this clause on Report, or will that be determined by regulation?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I am saying that we have no intention of setting it out in perpetuity; we are consulting on what the length of time would be and on the option of setting the limit at five years, which would indeed be set out in secondary legislation.
Lord Greaves
On the question of five years, if I remember correctly, the limit for outline planning applications and full applications used to be five years, and the limit for outlines was reduced to three years precisely to encourage people to get on with development and apply for reserved matters. Is it not the case that going back to five years for planning in principle before technical details are required could result in the process slowing down, which is the opposite to what the Government want?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I take the noble Lord’s point; I hope that all that would come out in the consultation and that we would arrive at a sensible period of time.
On Amendments 93A and 92K, in answer to the points raised about permission in principle applying to existing local and neighbourhood plans, I hope that I can make some helpful assurances. I make it clear that permission in principle, granted on allocation in locally prepared plans and registers, will apply only to those adopted once the permission in principle measure is fully in force. The Government have no intention to apply the measure retrospectively to site allocations in existing local development plans. It will be possible to grant permission in principle only going forward, so existing plans and site allocations will not be affected. My noble friend Lord Lansley asked what would happen to plans that are in evolution. Local authorities can go back and review their plans to put permission in principle to effect. I am making the point that it cannot be done retrospectively, which has been a concern.
Lord Greaves
While we are on this, in principle—I hate to use that word here—there might be no reason why, if the local plan has been put together in a very thorough way with lots of public consultation, it should not apply, once it is adopted, perhaps next year or later this year, to permission in principle. The problem is, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and the Minister said, that because of the way in which local plans are put together at present, very often there is not much public involvement about particular site allocations because people always think, “That’s been allocated for housing for ages so it’ll be allocated again, and we can always get involved and object if and when there’s a planning application”—and people hope that there never will be. If a local plan involving site allocations, whether it is the whole local plan or just the site allocations document, is almost or half-way ready to go to inspection, and the sites have more or less been agreed, and then there is the question of whether that plan, once it is adopted, should qualify for PIP, if the Minister is saying, “The local authority might have to go back and review it”, and if that then involves having a greater degree of public involvement and neighbour consultation than has taken place so far, that will delay the plan. Can the Government give a guarantee that under those circumstances they would not then penalise the authority for not meeting deadlines in production of the plan?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, there is no intention to penalise local authorities; the Government made it quite clear that this would not be retrospective but could be reviewed as time went on. The noble Lord makes his own case when he talked about local people not being involved in the planning process. In fact, there is every evidence that the local planning process has vastly increased engagement from local communities, so I think it is a very good system, and I hope that local people get involved.
I turn to Amendment 93B. I assure the noble Lord that, as I said, we intend to set out a sensible period of when permission in principle ceases to have effect in secondary legislation. Setting the arrangements out in secondary legislation is more prudent, allowing us to consult and explore this further so that we can get the approach right.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
If I could just complete this point, the noble Lord can come in afterwards. On Amendment 93C, I reassure the noble Lord that we are consulting on the application process for the technical details consent. We envisage that the process will draw on the existing planning application process set out in Part 3 of the Town and Country Planning Act of 1990. However, because the permission in principle, followed by technical details consent, is a different route to obtaining planning permission, it would be inappropriate to place a requirement in the Bill that fully duplicates the current full planning permission procedure at the technical details consent stage.
We will be setting out the application process for technical details consent in secondary legislation once our current consultation closes, and, as I have said today, I will be very interested to hear views from noble Lords. I invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Greaves
It would be very helpful to have a bit more information about some of the Government’s thinking on the secondary legislation to which the noble Baroness referred several times. That is what I was trying to intervene on. It is very difficult to know how the process is going to work and to understand it without knowing at least some of that. I accept that some of it is in the technical consultation, but not all.
Can the Minister tell us the relationship between pieces of land which have permission in principle and other planning applications that might be made on those pieces of land? Is the existence of the permission in principle a material consideration in the consideration of another planning application for a different use? If that planning application is granted, does the permission in principle on that land lapse, or would there be two permissions of a different sort side by side?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I do not think that a local authority would want to put a permission in principle on a site that already had an application for another use, but that would be up to the judgment of the local authority, particularly in planning for housing.
Lord Greaves
I am sorry to pursue the detail, but it is important. There might be a permission in principle on a piece of land that has been there for three or four years, and nothing has happened, and someone comes along and wants to develop it for something different. That is the sort of situation I am thinking of, in which the permission in principle is historic on the land, as it were, and it is a new application. Perhaps the Minister will write to me on that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment
“(4) Criteria for permission in principle and technical details consent shall be subject to consultation with local authorities.”
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 91 stands in the name of my noble friends Lord Beecham and Lord Kennedy and is still on the issue of permission in principle. In particular, we seek to mitigate the parts of the Bill that introduce a new system that in effect takes out both local democratic control and the rights of local people to have a say in proposals on their area—or on their doorsteps, as I think the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said earlier.
Amendment 91 would require consultation with local authorities on criteria for PIP and on the technical details. Amendment 94 sets out information about the permission in principle granted by a development order, which must have prior consultation with local planning authorities. Amendment 95 would allow local planning authorities to overturn permission in principle decisions where important material considerations which the planning stage did not reveal have come to light. My noble friend Lord Beecham gave the example of archaeological finds in the debate on an earlier group.
These amendments and the others in the group are essential if the Government’s new system is to retain any workable input of local democratic accountability and to allow for further consideration as circumstances or what is known about a particular plan and its effect come to light. I beg to move.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I have four amendments in this group that pursue the question of what should be in permission in principle and what in technical details. These are absolutely crucial issues, which need a great deal more thought between now and Report.
People will not understand that permission in principle can be given, as I suggested in Amendment 96ZC, for a piece of land where there are clearly drainage problems and there needs to be drainage assessment, unless that drainage assessment has taken place. If it is a brownfield site, is the local authority supposed to carry out that assessment to see whether a sustainable drainage scheme is needed for the site, to set out any details of measures that can mitigate the problem, or perhaps improve the problem by taking water off land that is liable to flood but that, if dealt with properly, would not? I suggest that that kind of thing ought to be part of the assessment of permission in principle, and it ought to be the responsibility of the developer to assess it and to produce a scheme that is acceptable. Otherwise, it will be put in the local plan as suitable for development, it will be allocated for housing and it will automatically get permission in principle because of that, yet the problems will not have been looked at and sorted out, and the certainty that the Government want for the developer will not exist. It will simply be transferred to the technical details stage.
Amendment 96ZD picks up another similar issue, which is highways and access appraisal. On any substantial development it is almost impossible to get outline planning permission nowadays unless you have the access sorted out. That is absolutely crucial. The access may be the direct access into the site, off the road or down the road, or works may be necessary on the local highways network to make the development of that site acceptable. Again, if that is not done by the permission in principle stage, if people think they have permission in principle and everything is okay, all the problems, all the expense of doing this will inevitably go to the technical details stage.
On the proposed timescale for dealing with consultations of three weeks, which I read out during the debate on the last amendment, if the local planning authority is consulting the local highways authority and it has to do a technical appraisal, go on site, measure junctions and all the rest of it, the whole thing is impossible. Unless it is sorted out at the permission in principle stage, there will be no certainty, permission in principle will be nothing, and technical details will turn into a full planning application type of process.
Baroness Andrews
My Lords, I have two amendments in this group that I hope take forward some of the matters which the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has already addressed. I shall go as quickly as I can, but I have been trying to thread my way through the technical consultation document and it has thrown up quite a few questions, and if the Minister will bear with me, I will ask those questions now.
Both the amendments seek clarity on the fundamental question of what happens when a PIP is set in stone and cannot be reopened. We have already addressed the question of what happens if information or material considerations that were unknown when the PIP was awarded turn up during the technical detail stage and may not even be covered. In this case, there would need to be some flexibility around modifying the PIP if it is not to be entirely lost, because that would seem a waste of time, energy and money all round.
Amendment 95 puts this question in more general terms by stating:
“Unless material considerations indicate otherwise”.
Amendment 96ZA focuses on instances,
“where the authority becomes aware of information since the permission in principle came into force which renders it no longer appropriate to determine the application in accordance with the relevant permission in principle”.
As the Minister anticipated, I will raise the issue of archaeology here, because it is a good example and not because I am obsessed with archaeology—
Baroness Andrews
Honestly, I am not obsessed with archaeology, but it seems a good example of what might happen, because archaeological findings have the habit of derailing development. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has raised a whole range of issues and material circumstances that can lead to extremely difficult outcomes. Our old industrial sites are often by rivers, so not only do we have layers of contamination going back 300 years, heavy metals and goodness knows what, but we have flooding issues. All such issues relate to the viability of the site, which is a key factor in whether permission should have been allocated in principle—we will come back to viability later on—but none of them would necessarily be explored at that plan-making stage when sites were given approval in principle. They also raise questions of when the NPPF kicks in, how we will see and know that, and the scope of what we mean by technical details.
The reason for pressing for clarity on this point at this stage of the Bill is obvious; it is because the PIP is a radical departure from the discretionary planning process that we have now. It shifts the locus of consent, the plan; it removes the key flexibility to refuse permission that exists—in relation, for example, to an outline planning application; and it implies that the principal development made in a plan cannot be reopened even when new evidence comes to light.
I am aware of the provisions in the Bill—we have discussed them briefly—that allow for decisions to be reopened after a period has elapsed, but they do not address this issue of when technical details that are not understood or anticipated at the plan-making stage challenge the core principles of whether development should go ahead. That illustrates the basic difficulty of having separated this process into two distinct halves.
Paragraph 2.13 of the consultation document states that this,
“does not prevent consideration of the technical details of the scheme against local and national policy and other relevant material considerations … Any conditions needed can be imposed when technical details consent is obtained”—
which I think means that the technical stage of the process, as well as the front end, will have to be in compliance with the NPPF, but I would like to have that confirmation. I would also like to know why the term “does not prevent” is used rather than “has to comply”. Can the Minister confirm that if the technical details are found wanting and there are some aspects that do not comply with the NPPF, the plan will not be approved? If he can give a clear answer, it would be very reassuring.
I have to raise a wider point here, which is the paradox whereby, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has alluded to, if you have not done the site assessment and there has been no requirement on you to visit and test out the site, how do you know whether the NPPF will apply? A review of the NPPF is going on, so how does the Minister think that might reflect what we are discussing in this Bill?
When we come to what is covered by the technical details, I have already raised what the Chancellor meant when he talked about a “limited” range of technical details. The Minister has said that we will have to wait for the consultation, but if she could have a stab at that this evening, that would be useful.
The technical consultation states that the parameters of the technical details that need to be agreed will have been “described” in the PIP, not that they will have been determined or agreed or assessed, for the difficulties that they might cause. What does “described” mean? Does it mean that they would be listed, that a paragraph of intent would have been written, or that evidence would have to be produced, either from a desk analysis or a site visit, on, for example, the history and extent of contamination?
The Minister will probably say that the developers or the LPA will already have identified key issues, because that will have been done in the local plan, which will passport the brownfield site forward. Great weight is put on the local plan; the argument is that it will save time. But local plans are sometimes barely more than a red-line indicator of an allocation; they go no further and rarely involve site visits or detailed investigations. They are subject to a strategic environmental assessment that is based on desktop analysis; it does not involve the requirement for wildlife or archaeological field surveys. Material considerations can cover all that.
Let us think about flooding. There are parts of the country that now flood once in every 10 years when previously they flooded once in every 100 years. These are new circumstances to take into account. I would be very happy incidentally for the Minister to write to me about this if that was simpler.
Here is the rub. Paragraph 2.25 of the technical assessment states:
“The local planning authority may not use the technical details consent process to reopen the ‘in principle’ issues”,
if they,
“are not acceptable for justifiable reasons”—
in which case—
“the local planning authority could justify a refusal at the technical details stage, and the applicant would have the right of appeal”.
So this is an opportunity for the Minister to say what a justifiable reason would be. Let us bear in mind that we are trying to bring greater certainty to this whole process, but not only does it appear that it can be overturned completely if the technical detail is confounded but there is no room for manoeuvre and no way in which the applicant can go back and say, “We’ve discovered a real problem. We can mitigate it, but it means we’ll have to really challenge and change the number of houses that we can build”.
Many of these facts and material considerations will not reveal themselves without serious site-based knowledge. How many developers are going to do that? Once they have permission in principle, they know that they are home and dry, at least in principle. So we could have the worst of all worlds: a fixed and immutable decision in principle which might be overturned when the full facts of the site and its constraints are known. This is a probing amendment, of course. It is an attempt to keep the door open to a change of mind over PIP when an important material consideration which could not have been foreseen actually comes to light.
Amendment 96ZA deals with where the material considerations take on an acute presentation. The very common unknown quantity of undesignated archaeology can stop development in its tracks. We know that archaeology is important because it is the only means we have to understand our remote past. Technology now gives us the power of understanding and overturning what we thought we knew. For example, recent investigations in Stonehenge revealed that masonry workers came as immigrants from Europe 2,500 years ago. We actually did not know that; it is another gift that immigration gives us.
Archaeology is fragile, irreplaceable and unpredictable. Some of it is known and designated; most of it is unknown, awaiting discovery and undesignated. That is precisely why, after such careful negotiation, the NPPF has put a clear weight on the need to protect heritage assets as part of sustainable development; that is in paragraph 128 of the NPPF. In fact, a fully predetermined assessment and evaluation is usually carried out only where there is an application for permission, and for conditions or obligations to be imposed, or to mitigate or compensate for unavoidable but justifiable harm to the historic environment.
The problem is that brownfield sites are the most intensively worked sites in our history. They have been occupied longer and more has been done to them, and there tends to be very intense archaeology now. In most of the city-centre archaeological sites, such as Leicester, brownfield sites are turning up extraordinary archaeological finds now—not just Richard III but whole medieval and Roman foundations, which we simply did not know about. So we have a problem with brownfield registers.
We also have a problem with SHLAA methodology which will be used, because that does not involve assessment either. Many of the sites that will be identified or allocated have not had the benefit of predetermination in terms of archaeology; therefore, there is a real possibility of damage.
Let me just short-circuit some of this. Any short-circuiting of the development management process which impedes or precludes the opportunity to oppose development on the basis of archaeological objections or to impose conditions makes the historic environment vulnerable. The PIP runs this risk because, as we know, it is not possible to impose conditions at the in-principle stage, and it is not clear that the technical details will encompass archaeological and other considerations related to the historic environment. As I said, it is very difficult to assess whether there is an in-principle objection to development on archaeological grounds without detailed consideration. If no in-principle objection is made, as I said before, sometimes you can mitigate rather than throw out the scheme.
The difficulties are compounded by the loss of expertise in local authorities. It is estimated that they have lost a third of their conservation officers in recent years. Relaxing planning regulation and reducing information requirements generally allow the planning regime to operate with less input from local authorities, and the reduction of input from local authority heritage and archaeological services is doubly damaging. It leaves the sites even more vulnerable to harm.
To conclude, both these amendments raise similar issues in slightly different form. I hope that at least—if in writing, that is perfectly acceptable—the Minister can actually address some of the specific issues that have been raised by the reading of the technical consultation document. But I ask her to think about something else. It would be really helpful if she could put the following assurances on the record—assurances that would apply equally to both my general and my specific amendment: that permission in principle will be decided only by local authorities, whatever its roots; that it will always be decided against the NPPF; that if there is insufficient understanding of the impact the development might have, permission in principle will not be used; and where the impact is difficult to assess without details, the authority will be encouraged to set a conservative limit on development or to carry out investigations as required by the NPPF in order to increase confidence as to the acceptability of the site.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
My Lords, I support Amendment 91 and the amendments down in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and I simply express the concern about the lack of clarity around the permission in principle process and the technical details stage. I had a very useful session with the policy and Bill team, and a brief one with the Minister about this, and I think that a considerable amount of greater clarity could be given for the benefit of the Committee about what issues will be taken into account at permission in principle stage and what issues will remain for the technical details stage, and what consultation will take place at both these stages.
I will briefly deal with the content of each stage and the consultation separately. I keep banging on about the need for a flow chart that demonstrates the steps in this process, and I hope that the Minister is going to provide us with that. Very strong assurances were given that the permission in principle could not go ahead if the site was not compliant with the NPPF. But I think that it would be of benefit to noble Lords if it could be spelled out in exquisite detail exactly what that would imply in terms of the sorts of issues that would be resolved at permission in principle stage, and assurance given that they would be also subject to full statutory consultation, including the statutory consultees, because that is the point at which both government agencies and others, and indeed the public, can be alerted to the possibility that a local authority will be granting permission in principle for a site.
At technical details stage, it is absolutely important—and I endorse what has been said by other noble Lords—that if we are going to be able to give developers the security that permission in principle needs to provide if it is not going to be a hollow process, we need to have resource to some of these hugely important details, which are contained in the NPPF. We need to be sure that local authorities are giving themselves sufficient assurance that things like flood risk, roads, contamination, nature conservation and other infrastructure issues are being dealt with adequately to give the local authority the security to assure developers that permission in principle can be granted. So the technical details stage genuinely becomes simply for the fine-tuning of the site, rather than trying to deal with some of these basic issues, at a point when permission in principle has already been granted on an adequate basis. That would also help with the current proposal that technical details would be subject only to discretionary consultation—that local authorities could decide how much and how far they wanted to consult on the technical details. If they genuinely are fine-tuning, I could just about live with discretionary consultation at that stage. But if they are at all going to deal with fundamental issues, which ought to have been dealt with at permission in principle stage, it would be important that full-scale consultation was required of local authorities at the technical detail stage, and not left for local discretion.
So I ask the Minister: before we reach Report stage, can we please have my flow chart? I think that that will reassure the Committee that permission in principle is not a hollow process, and that if permission in principle is granted by a local authority because a site is in the local plan, in the neighbourhood plan or in a brownfield register, it has also taken sufficient steps at the point of deciding that it is going to grant permission in principle to have taken account of all these hugely important issues at that stage and fully consulted on them.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
May I start on a cheery note and reassure the noble Baroness that I did send the flow chart out with the details of the regulations? I do know that some noble Lords on the Benches opposite did not seem to get it. It will go into the Printed Paper Office. I have some copies here and the noble Baroness can avail herself of one. I hope that she is content with that.
I must say to the noble Baroness that we have spent many hours discussing the process of PIP and, if I do not answer all of her questions, perhaps she could look through Hansard and get back to me. Some of what I am about to say may also give her reassurance.
When permission in principle is granted through locally prepared plans and registers, local authorities will choose which sites they grant it to as part of their existing plan-making and site-allocation work. This choice will therefore be a local one, reached through rigorous involvement of communities and members within the current plan-making process. For the application route for minor development, following the existing planning application process, local authorities will be required to determine applications for permission in principle in accordance with the development plan for the local area, unless material considerations indicate otherwise, after a period of consultation with the community and statutory bodies.
The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, asked me what “describe” meant. It means the setting out of expectations about what will be covered in a later application underpinned by evidence. That is my understanding of what “describe” means.
Amendment 94 would include in the Bill that information included on the planning register would be subject to consultation with local authorities. Under the current system, local planning authorities are already required to hold and maintain a planning register of all planning applications. The power in subsection (7) of new Section 59A, inserted into the Town and Country Planning Act by Clause 136, will merely require local authorities to add to the planning register information about permission in principle granted through locally made plans, registers and applications. The information to be placed on the register will be the same as they are currently required to publish or make available for standard planning applications.
On Amendments 95 and 95B, permission in principle will agree and establish the fundamental principle of development for location, uses and amount of housing development. Section 70(2ZZA), as introduced by the Government into the Town and Country Planning Act through this Bill, means that when the local authority determines an application for technical details consent, it cannot revisit the fundamental principles agreed by the permission in principle. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, pressed me again on what technical details might look like. They might look like matters relating to the design, affordable housing, inappropriate mitigation or, conversely, appropriate mitigation.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I do not think that the site would get permission in principle if there were no access to the site. That would be one of the fundamental principles for a site to be suitable for permission in principle. But I will get on to that.
If accepted, the amendments would have the consequence of allowing the local authority to reconsider the fundamental principles when considering an application for technical details consent. That defeats the purpose of the measure and undermines the certainty that it aims to give, because it allows other material considerations to become relevant during the decision-making process, as is currently the case. There would therefore effectively be no change.
However, I want to make it very clear that in determining an application for technical details consent, although the local planning authority will not be able to revisit the fundamental principles of development, it will be required to consider all the details of the application fully against the National Planning Policy Framework. The noble Baroness asked at what point; the NPPF is relevant the whole way through and local policy is also relevant. I re-emphasise that technical details consent can therefore be refused if the detail is not acceptable. Permission in principle is a tool that will allow the basic suitability of a site to be established early. What it will not do is override the need to ensure that proposals are sustainable, create mixed and balanced communities and include any necessary mitigation measures.
The noble Baroness pressed me on what would happen if technical details consent cannot be granted for a scheme. I hope that I have set out the rigorous process of consideration and engagement that will be followed to grant PIP and in that context, the scenario when no scheme can be given technical details consent, is an extremely rare one. But if it does occur, in those rare circumstances we have made provision for PIP granted on application to be revoked or modified.
Baroness Andrews
That is the first time we have heard that. Does that mean that there can be changes to PIP if the technical details require it? Would that mean that there could be an even lower number of houses or a slightly smaller site?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I understand that it could be modified in an extreme circumstance such as that. This is a rare circumstance, but I understand that that is the case.
On the revoking of a PIP granted by a local plan or brownfield allocation, the noble Baroness makes a good point. The Bill does not currently make provision for this, as she has told me again and again. Can I take that away and thank her for her points? She also asked me to confirm absolutely that only local authorities can be responsible for the granting of permission in principle. Yes, that is the case.
Lord Beecham
The Minister has just made a concession and agreed to my noble friend’s point, but she talks in terms of revocation. Is it not necessary also to provide for variation?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Baroness has raised something that I have said I will take away. I will also take away the noble Lord’s point because it is not particularly provided for in the Bill. Will the noble Lord and the noble Baroness let me take that away and reflect on it?
On Amendment 96ZA, an important starting point is that permission in principle will be granted where a proposal accords with the development plan for the area, having regard to the National Planning Policy Framework, as I have said, alongside other material considerations. When choosing appropriate sites that may be deemed suitable for a grant of permission in principle through a local plan, local authorities will be able to draw on a wealth of information to determine whether that site is suitable. That includes information gathered to support their local plan, a strategic housing land availability assessment, local knowledge of areas of constraint, engagement with communities and statutory bodies, and other information. That will all be underpinned by consideration against local and national policy.
It is possible that on the basis of that assessment a local authority could conclude that granting permission in principle would not be appropriate, either because the site is unsuitable—which goes to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves—or, in exceptional cases, that the fine detail of the scheme needs to be worked up before a decision can even be reached on the principle of development. I hope that what I have set out is a sensible basis for deciding whether to grant permission in principle. I remind noble Lords that it must be followed by a grant of technical details consent before development may commence.
I turn to Amendments 96ZC, 96ZD, 96ZE, and 96ZF, which provide by condition for the assessment of flood risk, highways and access, contaminated land, and securing of appropriate infrastructure through either Section 106 contributions or the community infrastructure levy. I hope that I have put the noble Lord’s mind at ease over the course of my remarks as I have described in more detail how permission in principle will operate—specifically that it will still include consideration of these important matters through an assessment against local and national planning policy.
Specifically on conditions, I hope that my comments on Amendment 94ZC set out the Government’s thinking on the timing for the use of conditions. Permission in principle is to provide simple certainty on the basic acceptability of a site early on in the process. As it does not on its own authorise development, conditions at this point would unnecessarily complicate matters, although we would expect local authorities to make clear, when they give permission in principle, the matters that they would expect to see covered in an application for technical details. On the community infrastructure levy, I confirm that, where it is in place, it would become payable once technical details consent has been granted, as is the case when full planning permission is given.
Finally, Schedule 12 is a list of consequential amendments that we have made to the Town and Country Planning Act and other planning legislation. This accompanies Clause 136 and is important for ensuring that permission in principle, as a new route to obtaining planning permission, operates effectively alongside the existing system. I will therefore press that Schedule 12 stands part of the Bill.
Baroness Andrews
I am very grateful for the noble Baroness’s response. I will read Hansard properly because I want to make sure that I heard her correctly. I will ask her one question, because she is being so generous. One of the technical details that really bothers me is the notion that affordable housing should come at the technical details stage. Is there any possibility that she could consider, when we talk about the 30% to 40% of affordable housing that we want to see in developments, making that a subsection of that stage? It is not of the same order as drainage and environmental considerations.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I hope that I can reassure the noble Baroness that that is certainly one of the things that could be part of that stage. I could perhaps come back to this on Report, but it is certainly one of the examples of what could come forward.
Lord Greaves
That was very interesting and we are making a bit of progress. I will put a particular instance to the Minister. It is based on real life, but I shall not say where it is. There was a big application for 500 houses—that is huge by east Lancashire standards. It has outline planning permission. As part of that, it required details of access. The highways authority—it is a two-tier area, so a county council—was required to approve access off not only an existing main road, but I think the roundabout on to that road. It also required a contribution towards improvements to a roundabout further down the road to increase its capacity on to the motorway. That all happened at the outline planning stage. Where would that happen under PIP and technical details? When will it happen? What is the process by which it would happen? Would that be part of declaring that that piece of land was okay for permission in principle, or would it have to wait for technical details?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, the noble Lord will know that outline planning permission is entirely different from permission in principle, but if a site required significant infrastructure investment to access it, it is unlikely that that would be a simple permission in principle site.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, on behalf of everyone who has spoken, I thank the Minister for dealing with that. We will all need to look quite closely at some of the things she said. At one point I thought she said that PIP was about the basic acceptability, but she also said that it would be very rare for the technical details to be declined. I see quite a contradiction in that if it is just very basic, but if it would then be very rare for the technical details to be the hold-up. However, that is something we will need to read carefully in what she said and ensure that these two fit in properly.
Other issues remain, particularly about the consultation. As my noble friend Lady Young said, is “technical details” just the fine tuning, or is there something quite substantial there? If PIP is only basic acceptability, it sounds like there is more there. However, like my other noble friends, I thank the Minister for agreeing to look at whether PIP could be modified for changes. We will want to come back and look at that when we have read this carefully, but for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Parminter
“(4) Permission in principle may not be granted in respect of land of high environmental value, which is defined as such by dint of—(a) containing priority habitat(s) listed under section 41 of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 (biodiversity lists and action (England));(b) holding a nature conservation designation such as ‘site of special scientific interest’; or(c) having been selected as a local wildlife site.(5) Land of high environmental value is also exempt from the development order requirements provided for by section 59A (development orders: permission in principle).”
Baroness Parminter (LD)
My Lords, I am a strong supporter of brownfield first when it comes to housing, but I have a particular concern that the PIP proposals do not exclude brownfield sites that have very clear benefits for biodiversity and, by extension, to society—namely, land of high environmental value. That could be SSSIs, heathland, local wildlife reserves or habitats for some of our most precious species, such as red squirrels, water voles, or bluebell forests, you name it—some really special areas of our country.
The coalition Government put together some very strong safeguards for such land. I quote the NPPF, paragraph 111:
“Planning policies and decisions should encourage the effective use of land by re-using land that has been previously developed (brownfield land), provided that it is not of high environmental value”.
The planning practice guidance goes on to say that brownfield land can have high ecological value and that,
“planning needs to take account of issues such as the biodiversity value which may be present on a brownfield site before decisions are taken”.
My concern with the PIP proposals is: how can those very strong safeguards in the NPPF and the planning guidance, which make it clear that those decisions have to be looked at right at the early stage, be taken into account? The Minister said earlier that if something was not compliant with the NPPF, it would not happen. It seems quite clear to me that the NPPF is saying that land of high environmental value is not compliant and it should therefore be excluded.
These sites are important, but they are not a huge number. My understanding is that English Nature has assessed the figures and we are looking at a total of between 6% and 8% of all brownfield land. They are important sites, but they are only a small number. Therefore, it would be difficult to argue that, by removing them from the PIP provisions, they would somehow prevent use of brownfield sites for housing overall. Clearly the number is quite contained.
They are a small number but they are vital. Most of our species—some 65%—particularly those of most concern, are declining. We need to take account of that, not only for the effects on nature and biodiversity, but for the impact on quality of life as well. Therefore, there is a strong case for land of high environmental value to be excluded. I beg to move.
Baroness Young of Old Scone
My Lords, I support these two amendments to which I have also put my name. It is distressing that we are again beginning to see important and lesser wildlife sites being increasingly damaged by development, and particularly by housing development. When I first came into the environmental movement almost 30 years ago, on average 15% of sites were damaged each year. We managed to get that down to less than 0.1% about 10 years ago, but it is increasingly creeping up again. So there is a real issue to make sure that the provisions for permission in principle and for the brownfield site register do not inadvertently make it more possible for development to damage sites of wildlife interest.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said, the NPPF and, indeed, the national planning practice guidance steer both local authorities and developers away from land of high environmental value. We run the risk of encouraging developers—at the breakneck speed with which we are moving towards the provision of housing in particular—to be less aware of the requirement to be careful, especially on brownfield sites and on sites such as local wildlife sites that do not have statutory protection. As the noble Baroness said, brownfield sites with high environmental value are comparatively small in number, but a proper assessment is required at the appropriate time for that to be established.
We also need to take into account the fact that some of the traditional safeguards against development of these sites have diminished. Local authorities are under pressure and have less specialist ecological advice available to them. The statutory nature conservation bodies similarly have less capacity and less ability to comment in detail on small-scale sites. So it would be absolutely right to have on the face of this Bill a reminder to both local authorities and developers of the importance of these sites and to abstract them from the permission in principle and the brownfield site register processes.
Lord Deben (Con)
My Lords, this is an important amendment and I hope that my noble friend will listen carefully to the arguments that have been put forward. I suspect that she will have been provided with an answer that goes somewhat like this: “We already cover this under this part and that part and the other part”. I have sat where she sits and I know that this is what civil servants are liable to suggest.
The reason for this amendment is precisely because it makes the position very clear. It states absolutely without peradventure that this is the position—not that if you look up in planning guidance you see that this is the recommended position. I beg my noble friend to recognise that we are dealing with people who will often do anything to avoid being concerned with the precise details that the amendment brings to our attention. I commend especially the comments of the noble Baroness opposite, who talked about the fact that, across the parties, we have fought together over many years to reduce the amount of damage done to wildlife sites. Frankly, we have been very successful. It has been a common activity and we have done well. However, there is some indication that there has been a return, in a way that is not reasonable and not what I think the majority of people in Britain want.
I am particularly keen on this amendment because of its reference to brownfield sites. I believe that we should be much tougher about building on brownfield sites and much more determined against building on greenfield sites. I believe from experience that, if you allow people to build on greenfield sites, that is where they will build; they will not build on brownfield sites. If that is the position you hold, it is important that you make a distinction between the vast majority—some 92%—of brownfield sites where building is obviously suitable and the 8% or so where there are specific environmental reasons for not building.
The amendment enables the Government to say on the face of the Bill what my noble friend will no doubt tell us that the Government believe. No doubt she will say, “We do not think we need it because we accept it and it is within the law”. I delicately suggest that there are many out there who do not do a lot of looking up and who do not search too carefully for the various documents. I would like it to be clear that there is no way in which these sites can be designated in principle for development because, small though they are, they are too important and too valuable for us in our generation to return to doing the damage that was done in previous generations.
Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)
My Lords, I cannot too strongly support the views expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and the noble Lord, Lord Deben. As somebody who has fought to preserve environmental and natural habitats, I know that we are talking about something that can easily become the thin end of the wedge. We should be trying to make it the thick end of the wedge. This country is not that big. As the noble Baroness said, we do not have so many areas that are dedicated to the preservation of wildlife. Very often, if the law is not strong enough—I have seen this happen—developers will march ahead and think, “We can sort this out later”. I could enumerate three or four examples of that. That is why it is so important that the Government take on board these amendments and protect our environment at all costs. Reading through the amendment, I am inclined to say to the noble Baroness, “What’s not to like?”.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, these areas are described in common parlance as brown land or brownfield sites. Although the legislation does not describe it in that way, that is how we normally describe these sites. When we refer to brownfield sites, we think of industrial areas, pollution and sites that are derelict rather than of the very wide variety of sites that would be covered by permission in principle. The essence of this issue is that many of those sites, particularly those on urban fringes and, indeed, in urban areas, probably have a more diverse and interesting ecology than do many greenfield sites, which often comprise monocultures and are not as important in ecological terms or in their value to local communities. This amendment is important as it would protect these designated sites and ensure that they are exempted from the Bill’s provisions.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter, Lady Young and Lady Bakewell, and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for tabling these amendments to both the permission in principle clause and the brownfield register. I also thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this short debate. I recognise how important this issue is and agree that the planning system should play an important role in the protection and promotion of the natural environment. I will briefly explain how the permission in principle measure will continue to ensure that the natural environment is both safeguarded and promoted without the need for such exclusions as set out in these amendments—I fear that my noble friend could have written this speech.
I begin by addressing Amendment 92. Clause 136 will enable permission in principle to be granted on sites that local planning authorities, parishes and neighbourhood forums choose and allocate within their plans or identify on new brownfield registers. The aim is to build on the detailed work that goes into plan production to identify suitable sites for particular housing-led development and to grant those that are considered locally to be suitable a level planning consent. This will give increased certainty for local authorities, developers and others that an amount of housing-led development is secured in principle, leaving them to work up and agree the details on the site. This means that the choice about where to grant permission in principle is a local one—as we have heard—reached through involvement of communities, members and statutory bodies. Permission in principle will therefore be granted only where development is considered to be locally acceptable, in line with local and national policy.
If a local authority considers that such sites of environmental sensitivity are not suitable for development, in line with the strong protections for the national environment set out in the national planning policy framework—both noble Baronesses mentioned this—then it need not allocate the site for such use in its local plan, or choose to grant it permission in principle. I should add that where an application for permission in principle for minor development is made to a local authority, it will be able to determine this in accordance with the local plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise. This would be in the same manner as planning applications are currently determined.
Lord Deben
My noble friend says that if the site was of the relevant kind and the local authority thought that it should therefore be designated in that way, it could do so. But does that mean that if this were a site of importance, the local authority could decide that it would develop it, because that seems to me to be rather difficult given the guidance in the other document? If the local authority cannot designate the site, will my noble friend explain why we cannot include the measure as an amendment to the Bill?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
As I said, if there are sites of environmental sensitivity that are not suitable for development in line with the strong protections of the NPPF, a local authority does not need to allocate the site for such use in its plans. This measure will continue to be in line with the strong protections in the NPPF.
Amendment 97 would place similar exclusions on land to be included on the brownfield register. I recognise noble Lords’ desire to protect land of high environmental value and understand concerns that such land should not be considered suitable for housing. I hope that I can reassure them why it would not be desirable or necessary to include such an exception in the Bill.
Local authorities will be required to have regard to national policies and advice when preparing their registers. This requirement is in the Bill. This means that when making decisions about which sites should be included on registers, local authorities will be required to take into account the NPPF. The framework states:
“Planning policies and decisions should encourage the effective use of land by re-using land that has been previously developed … provided that it is not of high environmental value”.
This is one of the core planning principles of the framework. Local authorities have discretion to determine whether a particular site is of high environmental value. I believe that this is the right approach.
Baroness Young of Old Scone
One of the points of this amendment is to pin down the concept of high environmental value rather more closely and clearly than is the case in the NPPF or, indeed, in the national planning practice guidance, by listing the parameters of high environmental quality. At the moment, there is very inconsistent practice by local authorities in determining that. That is unsatisfactory. It would be preferable to include in the Bill a standard definition.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
A definition in the Bill would remove discretion and override a local understanding of the environmental value of the land. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, an area considered to be of high environmental value in an inner-city might be quite different from that in other areas. A fixed definition could unintentionally lead to a situation where a local authority would have excluded land but was prevented from doing so by the definition. Local authorities are best placed to exercise their discretion and to make the decision, rather than fixing a definition for them by putting it in the Bill. I hope that, on the basis of these explanations, noble Lords will agree not to press their amendments.
Baroness Parminter
I thank the noble Baroness for her comments and her acceptance that this is an important issue. It clearly is, given the strength of feeling in the Committee, and I am grateful to colleagues for rowing in on it. The Minister seems to be saying that it is up to local authorities. If one is being charitable, it is a belief in the spirit of localism: it is okay for local authorities to do this because they can look back to the planning guidance that we have already provided. However, the words “need not”, which the noble Lord, Lord Deben, picked up, are critical. If they need not allocate this land, it means that they can allocate it. However, that is clearly contrary to the provisions set down by the coalition in the NPPF, which says that this should be excluded. Colleagues in Committee have shown that this designation is, in principle, too important not to be included in the Bill. I will withdraw the amendment now, but I am sure that we will return to it on Report.
“(4) A development order under subsection (1) shall be made in respect of land in Greater London by the Mayor of London and in respect of land in England outside of Greater London by the Secretary of State.(5) Section 59B (development orders made by the Mayor of London) shall apply to the making of a development order under subsection (1) by the Mayor of London.”
Lord Tope
My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 96A. I begin by raising a couple of issues, in the hope that by the time I finish—which will not be long—clarification may have arrived. The Housing and Planning Minister in the other place stated that the mayor will be consulted on, and have the power to call in, applications of technical details consent where they are for schemes of strategic importance, and gave the assurance that the mayor will have an opportunity to influence the process of boroughs identifying sites of strategic importance. I hope that, when she replies, the Minister here can clarify exactly what that means in practice and how the mayor’s strategic planning powers which exist now will be taken properly into account in the new system. For instance,
“an opportunity to influence the process by providing his views”,—[Official Report, Commons, Housing and Planning Bill Committee, 3/12/15; col. 548.]
is significantly weaker than the current power to take over an application. Although the mayor may still be able to take over an application at technical consent stage, the principle of the type of development will already have been set. That highlights why we are moving these amendments today.
Amendment 92B would give the mayor power within Greater London to grant development orders. Amendment 96A sets out the detail that he or she would have to follow in doing so, including a fairly full consultation process with a duty to respond to that consultation. That would directly correlate with the power of the Secretary of State elsewhere in the country. It is appropriate to an authority which has had a directly elected mayor, with a strategic planning role, for 16 years.
Many times during the progress of the Bill we have said that London is different. It is different in that respect and in terms of having a particularly high level of housing need. It has a strong economy and competing pressures for available land and high-density development. Almost all the land with housing potential within Greater London is brownfield and most has existing use in place. I speak as a London resident: if we are going to go down this route then the mayor and the Greater London Authority are better placed to understand London’s particular needs. That is why they are there. Their relationship with the London boroughs, while occasionally and understandably difficult, is on the whole very good and there is a continuous dialogue there. It is much more appropriate for the Mayor of London and Greater London Authority to have these powers in relation to Greater London than for them to be vested in the Secretary of State, who has to deal with the rest of country as a whole. We believe in devolution and this is very much a part of it. In this case it is to the GLA—what may follow elsewhere is not part of this amendment.
In essence, the purpose of these amendments is to give the Mayor of London—whoever that may be—the powers that the Secretary of State will have in the rest of the country. I beg to move.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, I support the amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Tope. I was surprised when he said we have had a Mayor of London for 16 years—the establishment of that position was another great step forward by a Labour Government.
It is absolutely appropriate that the mayor—the only politician with a London-wide executive mandate—has these powers. The amendment sets out a framework in which he can make an order, including who he must consult and how the proposal should be dealt with. It is effective and time-constrained and should not cause any undue delay. It reflects the mayor’s mandate and we think it strikes the right balance, enabling him to help drive forward the development of our great capital city.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Tope, for his comments on these amendments, and to the noble Baroness. I hope I will be able to assure your Lordships that the Mayor of London will continue to play an important role without the need for these amendments.
New Section 59A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, inserted by Clause 136, makes it possible for permission in principle to be granted on sites allocated within local development plans, neighbourhood plans and the new brownfield register, and the choice of when to do this will be a local one. Let me be absolutely clear that the Secretary of State will have no direct role in choosing specific sites to grant permission in principle to. In the same way that the Secretary of State maintains oversight of the existing development order-making powers under Section 59 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to ensure consistency of how the planning system functions across England, he must maintain oversight of how the permission-in-principle system will work.
Amendment 92B would effectively set up different planning systems between London and the rest of the country by giving the Mayor of London the ability to change the process for permission in principle. We believe that introducing inconsistency into the system would be undesirable.
I reassure noble Lords that there are a number of ways in which the Mayor of London will be able to play an active role in influencing the granting of permission in principle in London. The London Plan will be able to set policies that will influence which sites are suitable for a grant of permission in principle. The mayor will also be a key statutory consultee during the plan preparation of any borough in London. Furthermore, where a mayoral development corporation is in place, the plan for that corporation can allocate specific sites that could be granted permission in principle. Mayoral development orders can also now be used to grant planning permission for site-specific development in London.
The noble Lord also asked whether the mayor would be able to call in applications for technical details consent. The answer is yes: the mayor can call in applications, including the new technical details consent, when the planning application is of potential strategic importance. He can also do this for an application for permission in principle. I will see if there is any further information that I can provide the noble Lord with in writing, but I hope that on the basis of what I have said he will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Beecham
For the avoidance of doubt, will the Minister confirm that the Government do not intend to extend any of these mayoral powers to the mayors of combined authorities under the devolution deal?
Lord Tope
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. I think she said that this would give London a different system from the rest of the country. London has a different system from the rest of the country. It has had it for 16 years. The Government believe in devolution. This seems a logical part of the difference of London, which was set up originally under a Labour Government and has been supported by a coalition Government and a Conservative Government. I do not really follow that justification.
I am grateful to the Minister for what she said. I did not actually ask if the mayor would have those call-in powers. I said that, since he does have those call-in powers, can she say a bit more about how that relates to the current situation? If she can write to me further, as she said she would, I would be very grateful. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Rotherwick
“(4) Permission in principle may not be granted for a development of land which is an important part of the national infrastructure, or is the subject of national policy or interest, as defined by the Secretary of State in regulations made by statutory instrument.”
Lord Rotherwick (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend and her officials for the time they gave to address my concerns in a number of meetings. I will speak to Amendments 92C and 97B. First, I declare an interest as a private pilot. I am vice-president of the General Aviation Alliance and president of the General Aviation Awareness Council. I love flying and I seek to protect the ability of British people to take to the skies for both business and recreation in all sorts of light aircraft.
General aviation—GA—aerodromes are very vulnerable to development. Many are officially deemed brownfield sites, even though they may actually comprise broad acres of flat grassland in desirable locations. They are much coveted by developers for housing. We have already lost many vulnerable aerodromes that form part of a national communications network. The pressures on land in our crowded island mean that they are threatened by the Bill’s intent to ease the planning process for housing. If aerodromes are added to the register of sites that have planning permission in principle, they will be doomed.
The Government’s own General Aviation Strategy, published last year, indicated that GA was worth £3 billion annually to the UK economy and emphasised the importance of our national network of aerodromes. The strategy specifically notes that many aerodromes do not believe that they have,
“the full support of local authorities and Local Enterprise Partnerships ... While most of these bodies would acknowledge the clear value of GA infrastructure this appeared to be often overshadowed by the need for other land use priorities, in particular housing”.
GA supports 38,000 skilled jobs, often in rural areas. GA gives us transport choices—an alternative to our increasingly congested roads, railways and major airports. This is particularly important to businesspeople —wealth creators—to whom time is always valuable.
Other uses and users of the UK aerodrome network include pilot training, air ambulances, the police and recreational flying. GA aerodromes have other benefits in addition to their economic, recreational and transport value. They are unofficial wildlife sanctuaries, protecting the habitats of flora and fauna and providing large open spaces close to and sometimes within our expanding towns and cities. We cannot afford to lose any more of these aerodromes.
When the National Planning Policy Framework—NPPF—was introduced, I spoke in this House about the need to give aerodromes specific protection, with some result. This Bill again raises the threat that localism may trump the national interest because no adequate powers are given to the Secretary of State to exclude land from the register. I speak now about not only aerodromes but other national communications, security and economic assets, and my amendment is broadly framed as a consequence.
Under Clause 137 and proposed new Section 14A(1) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 the Secretary of State could prescribe land which can be included, but no power is proposed in primary legislation for the Secretary of State to exclude specific categories of land from the register. This could permit unrestricted housing development that would have a detrimental effect on national infrastructure, security and economic activity. My concern is that the Bill as currently drafted omits to provide the Secretary of State with clear and specific powers to protect the national interest in important matters. Regulations that “may” be issued and guidance that “may” be followed are not adequate to protect essential national infrastructure that is often already under serious development pressure.
In addition, the local registers of land available for development were first prepared under the previous planning regime and may still include land that should have been given special consideration under the NPPF. My proposals would amend Clause 137 and new Section 14A(1) so as to give the Secretary of State powers to exclude from the register land which is considered to be of significant value for national infrastructure or economic purposes, or otherwise the subject of national policy and interest. It must be recognised that these areas of land have current or potential economic value for the national communications infrastructure which may outweigh the benefits of housing development.
Amendment 97B defines for planning purposes aerodromes operating as aerodromes for more than 28 days in a calendar year as those which are specifically excluded; in other words, those that do not operate for more than 28 days in a calendar year would be deemed obsolete. Exclusion from the register does not of course mean that the site cannot be registered. It requires only that any proposed development should go through the normal planning allocation process with full consultation. I beg to move.
Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington (CB)
My Lords, I support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick. I also have to declare my interests as president for many years of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association and as a keen private pilot myself. I will be brief. The noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, set out eloquently the difficulties that general aviation is facing. There are one or two issues that I think need to be stressed.
General aviation gives to this country an essential network and it is in essence vital to the public interest. It provides an infrastructure for travelling that is second to none if one is privileged to use it. It also does immense work in terms of training professional pilots. This country, along with America, is one of the world’s centres for training professional pilots who go on into the commercial world and other areas such as the air ambulance service, the police and so on. Commercial concerns have been illustrated. General aviation in this country brings in £3 billion a year, which is a considerable sum of money and reinforces the importance of general aviation. Also, there are many amateur pilots who love flying for the sake of flying. They love the leisure pursuit of getting away from the troubles that inflict the world we know when we are walking on the ground; it is a delight to get into the air.
It is essential that the consultation process covers issues that involve the public interest. Over the past 10 years, many airfields have closed, sometimes for good reason. Surely, as the noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, has underlined, there has to be a consultation process that involves the people who give their time and professional input and will have their careers put on the line if some of these airports are closed.
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 94A, 95A and 101BA, in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Whitaker and Lady Hodgson of Abinger, and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. I declare my interest as an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and as a vice-president of the Town and Country Planning Association. Such are the mysteries of amendment groupings that I can see only the most tenuous connection between these amendments and the very interesting amendments on aerodromes from the noble Lords, Lord Rotherwick and Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington.
Amendments 94A and 95A are intended to ensure that the admirable ambition to build a million homes over the life of this Parliament—the quest for quantity—does not come at the expense of quality and of building decent homes that contribute positively to their environment rather than spoiling it. In considering these issues, it has been hugely helpful to have before us the report from the Lords Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment, Building Better Places. I congratulate the chair of the committee, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, her committee members, clerk and advisers.
The Government’s permission in principle concept aims to speed up planning and help housebuilders know quickly where they stand, but it brings with it the risk that it is interpreted as, “We want you to get going and we are not much concerned about what your development looks like, how it fits into its local setting, or whether it contributes anything to the community where it happens”. Disregarding design has two huge dangers. First, what is built becomes deeply disliked by those who move in—suffering the fate of those dreadful 1960s and 1970s estates that have subsequently been demolished. Secondly, the drive for more housebuilding, which is indeed desperately needed, is stymied by widespread public opinion that quite justifiably concludes that new homes are a blight not an asset. If design of housing developments is awful—as has not infrequently been the case, I am afraid to say—then public opinion will ensure that the hopes for more housebuilding never materialise.
These amendments should protect the Government’s ambitions for more new homes by making sure that the new permission in principle is not a handicap. It must not be a licence to ignore the Government’s own, helpful, National Planning Policy Framework, which sets the parameters—in paragraph 59—for decent design. The NPPF contains a very good set of guidelines covering considerations such as incorporating green and public space in new developments, responding to local character and history, respecting local surroundings and materials, and so on.
I know from experience that objectors to new schemes, suspecting they will be as ghastly as the worst examples of abysmal new private sector estates, can become supporters and advocates when they see good design shine through. To take a couple of examples: at the opening of the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust’s village scheme in Hovingham, North Yorkshire, a local councillor said to me, “I was one of the strongest opponents of this development: I thought it would spoil the village. How wrong I was. It will not only provide excellent homes for local families but it also adds to the attractiveness of the village”.
My second example is the major new Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust scheme of 540 homes on the east side of York. This was subject to seemingly endless opposition, but has won over many of its critics with its high-quality design and emphasis on sustainability. A master plan by PRP Architects provides for extensive green space and play areas, homes designed by Richard Partington to an award-winning design of arts and crafts for the 21st century, and extensive environmental enhancements. We can expect public support for the big housebuilding programme the nation needs only if the new homes follow best practice in place-making. To make this happen, local planning authorities must remain able to ensure good-quality design. We know how stretched authorities have become following big reductions in their budgets; it is not good to see this key link in the development chain weakened at just the moment when housebuilding is set to grow rapidly. If planners are to maintain their role as the line of defence against a decline in quality, they need some legislative support to fortify their position.
Amendments 94A, 95A and 101BA propose that the new permission in principle, which means in effect that planning consent becomes as of right for sites in the local plan, in neighbourhood plans and on registered brownfield land, should be conditional on following some straightforward, site-specific design guidance. This says to the developer: “Go ahead in the expectation of getting planning consent, but bear in mind our core design requirements for this particular site”. This approach would draw on the good guidance in the NPPF and give clarity to the housebuilder without adding a lot of bureaucracy. When the local planning authority considers detailed planning permission at the new second stage, which involves the consideration of technical details, compliance with the earlier site-specific design guidance would be checked. Thereby, the arrangements in these amendments square an important circle, speeding up the planning process but emphasising the design requirements that each site should take on board. I commend them to your Lordships.
Baroness Whitaker
My Lords, I declare an interest as an honorary fellow of the RIBA. I shall speak to Amendments 94A and 95A, so persuasively introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Best, and Amendment 101BA, in my name. The noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson of Abinger, who regrets she cannot be here, also supports these important amendments, as does the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. So there is all-party support for amendments which are intended to ensure that, in the radical changes to planning processes envisaged by permission in principle, the all-important role of good design is guaranteed. Why is it all-important? Because good design has a fundamental effect on well-being, environmental quality, and the long-term economic value of buildings and competitiveness of places, and because it is at risk in the new procedure proposed.
We heard in the Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment, which reported on 19 February, powerful evidence that health, employment prospects, access to services and amenities, were all improved by design which respected good place-making. The Minister responsible, Brandon Lewis, said to us that,
“an increased focus on good quality design could help us to deliver more homes, at a quicker pace, which communities can feel proud of”.
Planning authorities are the custodians of their local community’s requirements for the right design for their place. To substitute for their discretion an as-of-right regime is to risk issuing a blank cheque for the design of the development. It means that the all-important factors of height, density, landscape, layout, connections for transport and access, to name but a few, need not be considered from the outset. But it is at the outset that they should be thought about. These are not matters of detail, as the Bill would have us believe, but fundamental development parameters that determine the suitability of the development, both to its place and to the needs and aspirations of communities. This is how the National Planning Policy Framework—a very good achievement by the Government—envisages the role of design, and it is the right one. Without consideration of these matters of place-making, how will communities know how developments impact on surrounding areas, on the environment and on the sense of place? Yet they are being asked to give their approval without due regard to these matters. This is surely a recipe for nimbyism.
These amendments all reinforce the essential consideration to be made right at the beginning of a development process, in accordance with the NPPF, of what sort of place will result. The site-specific guidance need only set out the fundamental design requirements and should be relatively easy and quick to prepare, either by the local authority or by the developer. It can be done for an area as much as for individual sites, but it would be a tremendous advantage. It would be an invaluable way to strengthen the hand of planning authorities now that they have been so hollowed out by local authority cuts in staff and expertise. Our recommendation in the Select Committee report is prefaced by the sentence:
“We are anxious to ensure that moves towards a permission in principle do not undermine the capacity of local authorities to develop, design and integrate key sites in a way that ensures that they function effectively and respond to local needs and aspirations”.
Finally, the implementation of these amendments would make it easier for local communities to accept the development that is necessary to provide the housing we need, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, said. They can involve public engagement early on in the process as well as provide an opportunity to establish what is important to local people. All the evidence suggests that a little more effort spent establishing the key principles at the start can greatly smooth and shorten the process of planning and development overall. I urge the Minister to respect her Government’s NPPF and accept them.
Lord Clement-Jones
My Lords, I rise very briefly as a member of the Select Committee to support Amendments 94A and 95A, so ably spoken to by both the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, and simply to draw the Minister’s attention to a couple of paragraphs in the Select Committee report which directly bear on the planning-in-principle point. Paragraph 143 says:
“These proposals have caused some concern. It was suggested that ‘principle’ and ‘detail’ in the planning system were closely related”.
One particular witness is quoted as saying:
“This negates the whole basis of the fact that detail and principle in planning are intimately related. How is it possible to give permission for something in principle, without understanding its detailed design or flood risk mitigation or sustainable urban drainage or proportion of social housing? I could go on. It misunderstands the intellectual process of making planning decisions”.
So the Select Committee came to the conclusion in paragraph 148:
“We are anxious to ensure that moves towards a permission in principle do not undermine the capacity of local authorities to develop, design and integrate key sites in a way that ensures that they function effectively and respond to local needs and aspirations. The relationship between principle and detail is important in the planning system. We recommend that the Government should carefully consider the impact its reforms could have upon this relationship. As a minimum, it is important that the process of granting permission in principle and Technical Details Consent should give due regard to design quality, sustainability, archaeology, heritage and all the other key components of place-making that would normally be required for the granting of planning permission”.
This amendment precisely reflects those concerns and I very much hope the Minister will have due regard to them.
The Duke of Somerset (CB)
My Lords, I would also like to speak to Amendments 94A and 95A. I mentioned the importance of design in my Second Reading speech and I return to the subject in this grouping.
Baroness Andrews
My Lords, my noble friends Lord Beecham and Lord Collins and I have an amendment in this group. It reflects much of what has already been said. I commend the other amendments in this group. Our amendment puts concern about sustainable development and design further forward in the process of what goes on the brownfield register and what we expect from brownfield sites. It is important to consider putting it at this point in the Bill because the provisions setting up the brownfield register have no explicit place-making or sustainable development obligations in relation to land included in the register. It seems unfortunate to miss this opportunity, so this amendment attempts to address this by placing a high-level obligation in the Bill to ensure that brownfield land on the brownfield register contributes to sustainable places.
The purpose of the brownfield register is essentially to speed up the provision of housing. The Chancellor has described it as introducing a zonal system, like that seen in the United States. The argument is that this will reduce unnecessary delay and uncertainty for the developer. We have debated aspects of this today, and I am not quite sure why this should follow, especially since we now have 200,000 sites where development has been granted but no building has begun. I am surprised that some more simple way was not found to accelerate development on those sites rather than go through the business of introducing a completely new idea into the planning system.
My concern with the housing zones idea is that there is a chance that they will be just that—acres of housing, as the noble Duke, the Duke of Somerset, has just indicated, which are put up as quickly as possible and, by implication, as cheaply as possible, and which as he said will replicate the worst sort of housing we saw in the 1950s and 1960s in the housing estates which are now being knocked down. They remind me of nothing so much as the housing estates which were put up in south Wales on the tops and the sides of mountains in the 1950s and 1960s, where so little thought was given to the needs of those communities, which needed a bus to get down to the town in the valley, that there was barely a shop, a tree or a bus stop on them. Those estates have been problematic for many years, despite good communities living there. That sort of barren housing estate in this country, as well as ugly town centres and infrastructure, has given us so many problems.
The Minister may say that this will be covered because, in new Section 14A(7)(b), the regulations will require LPAs in setting up a register to have regard to “national policies and advice”. That may be so, but that could still be reinforced by sticking my amendment on the end of it to lift the idea that sustainable development and design is at the heart of our expectations for these new developments.
What worries me is that when we come to the technical consultation it does not say that any development must be sustainable. It says that the sites must be deliverable and available, that there will be a realistic prospect of houses within five years and that they will be “viably developed”. In the absence of any strong reference to the paramount need to ensure the sustainability of the site, the issues around viability become very vexed. We know from our discussions in the Select Committee just how vexed they are. In evidence we were told that viability is now the key element in discussions between local authorities and developers over specific planning proposals. It was suggested, for example, that the absence of an agreed methodology means a range of different approaches in different areas as to what makes a development viable, and raises the possibility of uncertainty and delay as well as exploitation by developers seeking to avoid planning obligations. Anything we can do in the Bill to improve on that situation to deter that sort of behaviour we should try to do.
Such was the concern at the evidence we received that the Committee recommended that the NPPF and the planning guidance make even clearer than they do at the moment that the process of viability assessment should not be used to enable the unreasonable use of viability assessments to avoid the funding of affordable housing and core infrastructure. I therefore urge the Minister to look at the recommendations in the report, test them out against sustainability before she proceeds further with this part of the Bill and to put in the Bill a clear statement that the brownfield register must have regard to sustainable development and design before the Government approach the notion of viability.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I will speak just a few words on Amendment 98A. It is quite odd that in this debate no one has referred to the biggest driver of ugly housing and design in the United Kingdom. It is not bad architects, problems in planning law or disinterested local authorities but the price of land. In many areas that is what determines what houses look like and how they are placed on these sites. The noble Duke referred to mass-market box housing that is crammed in. That is what you get when you have high-priced land. All these debates that are taking place take me back to my amendment—it seems as if I moved it six months ago—on the price of land and the need to build on the green belt as the population expands.
In America, people can buy a house for a fraction of what they pay in the United Kingdom. The reason is very simple: land is cheaper. They do not need fancy architects or planners to tell them to do it. People want better-designed houses because they can afford them. The driver here is the price of land, which is driving millions of people out of the housing market. The best way to deal with this problem is to find a way of securing land at sensible prices, and these problems will evaporate.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I hesitate to disagree with my noble friend because I entirely agree with him that the price of land is a significant issue, and it has risen to an unconscionable extent in recent years. However, I do not think that is a good enough reason to acquit the industry of poor design and poor building. Good design and well-built properties are not incompatible with a reasonable price, even allowing for the undoubted problems of land prices. I am afraid that volume builders over the years, when prices were not as high, have not produced good-quality properties, paid little attention to issues such as energy conservation—never mind the aesthetics. My noble friend is being overindulgent towards the industry while making a very valid point about land prices.
I hope the Minister will think about the land price issue. My noble friend Lord McKenzie muttered the words “Develop land tax” to me as I rose, and that is not a bad idea, to be reverted to. That apart, I hope she will stress the need for good design as part of the Government’s approach to housing and part of their interest when looking at the technical side of permitted development. I would not like to see carte blanche given to the kind of builders who put up pretty depressing properties, as the noble Duke, the Duke of Somerset, referred to before. We should not give them any excuse. They should be made, in the context of the new system, to provide aesthetic quality and energy-efficient quality, among other things, as part of the deal.
Lord True
My Lords, we are reserving remarks about the register until later, so I am puzzled about the register and the point of it and what we will actually do with it when we as a local authority have it, as I said earlier. I agree with what has been said about design, but I also hear what has been said about sustainability. The only thing I would say is that some of the ugliest properties that I have ever seen passed the highest sustainability tests—the wonderful eco-house that is completely jarring in its setting. There are tensions between design and sustainability. That of course leads me back to local rather than national determination. We have to tease out some of these things before putting them in the Bill.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, turning first to Amendments 92C and 97B, I fully understand the desire of my noble friend Lord Rotherwick to protect land which is an important part of national infrastructure, including the network of aerodromes, in which I am aware the noble Lord has a particular interest. I will briefly set out why adequate protection for these sites will remain without the need for the amendments proposed.
To be clear, Clause 136 will enable permission in principle to be granted on sites that local planning authorities, parishes and neighbourhood forums consider to be acceptable in line with local or national policy. The National Planning Policy Framework is very clear that, when planning for airports and airfields, they should take account of their growth and role in serving business, leisure, training and emergency needs. Therefore, if a local authority considers that a site is not suitable for housing-led development in line with national and local policy, it need not allocate it for such use in its local plan or go further to grant it permission in principle.
Lord Rotherwick
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for her comprehensive reply and her offer to talk further with the general aviation sector. I, of course, was hoping for something more—something that could be written into the Bill; perhaps I was rashly optimistic. I will take away her reply and contemplate it during the Easter Recess. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Shipley
“(2) “Qualifying document” means the development plan or a register as defined in section 14A of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 (register of land).”
Lord Shipley
My Lords, Amendment 92HB would rewrite new Section 59A(2) that is inserted into the Town and Country Planning Act by this Bill. I thank the Royal Town Planning Institute for its advice on this amendment. As we know, the Government have indicated that they intend to use local plans and the proposed brownfield register as the vehicles for the new system of permission in principle. This should be made clearer in the Bill, and that is the subject of this amendment.
There are good reasons to limit permission in principle to sites in local plans. Since these have been subject to public consultation and public examination, there would seem to be a strong case for reducing any further handling of the principle of development in the interests of accelerating housing development and, just as importantly, demonstrating the importance of the plan.
However, I think that the Bill should limit permission in principle to sites in the proposed brownfield register. If there is to be such a register—and that is the Government’s intention—we need to know what kind of register it is to be, and whether any other document can be drawn up to grant permission in principle that would run counter to local democratic accountability. This amendment would provide for the qualifying document only to be a local plan or a register of the kind being introduced by new Section 14A.
This amendment would not in itself limit the permission in principle to the brownfield register, but it does limit it to local plans and the new Section 14A registers, which is a great improvement on the Bill. Secondary legislation should then be used to limit new Section 14A registers to the brownfield register. This is because using the Bill to define brownfield may in practice prove an unwieldy mechanism and would actually be better in secondary legislation.
I hope that this amendment is clear. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)
My Lords, if Amendment 92HB is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 92J to 92M inclusive for reasons of pre-emption.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for his comments on Amendment 92HB. The Government have been clear from the beginning that they consider the qualifying documents capable of granting permission in principle to be limited to development plan documents, neighbourhood plans and brownfield registers. But I agree that it might provide more certainty and assurances to the industry and the key stakeholders to go further and specify these documents in the Bill in the way the noble Lord has proposed. I am happy to take the issue away and look at how we can draft an appropriate government amendment on Report that carefully sets out the documents that are capable of granting permission in principle. With these firm assurances, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
On Amendment 92M, it is extremely important that the wording in the definition of “qualifying document” in new Section 59A(2)(d) remains. This enables permission in principle to be granted for the particulars of the development set out in a site allocation. We currently intend that these prescribed particulars will be limited to use, location and amount of development, and a qualifying document must include that detail if the site is to benefit from the grant of a permission in principle. We are currently consulting on the matters that can be granted permission in principle and will be setting these out in secondary legislation. With those comments, I ask the noble Lord not to press this amendment.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s reassurance on the matter and look forward to learning more when we get to Report. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Andrews
“(2ZZD) An application for technical details consent in relation to permission in principle will be subject to section 61W (consultation before applying for planning permission) and section 65 (notice etc of applications for planning permission) of this Act.”
Baroness Andrews
My Lords, I am moving this amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Beecham. I admit that I am feeling my way on this, because essentially it is a probing amendment to discover what, if any, legislative provisions on public consultation will apply to permission in principle. This is an opportunity for the Minister to spell out exactly how this will work. We had a bit discussion on this, which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, who seemed to think that because the consultation process as part of the planning application in the plan will apply, that might stimulate people to take a greater interest in the local plan. I am sceptical about that, because so often it is hard to engage with the timetable, detail and process of plan making, whether a local or a neighbourhood plan. It would be useful to have some detail and clarity around that part of the process.
However, I am really interested in what happens when we get to the technical detail stage, which is where my amendment kicks in. I am raising this because I am genuinely concerned. The technical consultation document states in paragraph 2.35:
“Before an application for technical details consent is determined, we do not propose to require by secondary legislation that local planning authorities consult with the community and others before making a decision”.
They welcome our views on this. I can give the Minister my view now: it would be a mistake not to have a public consultation in the course of the technical details stage.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, the effects, implications and consequences of the planning in principle and technical details regime for consultation with ordinary members of the public, whether they are residents, members of interested groups or whatever, is one of the more alarming parts of the proposed PIP system. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, on tabling Amendment 96ZBA.
My Amendment 100ZAZC is about notifications and publicity. This is something that we need to get to the bottom of before this matter leaves your Lordships’ House—although I do not imagine before it leaves Committee—and not wait for the consultation. What is set out in the technical consultation document is not very satisfactory. I will explain why in a minute.
My amendment would insert a new subsection into Section 65 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. It says:
“A development order which makes provision under subsection (1)”,
in setting up the new permission in principle system,
“must also provide that … any requirements relating to applications for outline planning permission also apply to applications for planning in principle”.
The technical document suggests that that is the Government’s view, too, although I can see huge problems with consulting residents over permission in principle, because they will come up with all kinds of comments, objections and concerns that will be ruled out of order as nothing to do with the very limited parameters of permission in principle. There will be problems, but I think that what the Government propose to do is okay as it stands.
Any requirements relating to applications for approval of reserved matters also apply to applications for technical details consent. This is a matter for alarm and I will come to it in a minute. My amendment states:
“when compiling a register under section 14A of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004”,
—that is, a brownfield register—
“the local planning authority must have regard to the requirements for notices, publicity and the issue of certificates that apply to applications for planning permission and carry out procedures to the same effect”.
If a local authority is setting up a brownfield register, and if at least part of that register is going automatically to grant permission in principle, the requirements for putting a notice on a piece of brownfield land and writing to immediate neighbours—or whatever it is that the local planning authority would do if this were an ordinary planning application—must apply. If they do not know it is happening, by the time it has happened it will be too late. It will not be the same as a local plan, where there are at least general attempts to publicise it and to get people to say what they think about it. In the case of just putting a piece of land on a brownfield register, the systems for telling people what is happening and giving them the chance to have their say must be the same as if this were a planning permission.
My amendment continues:
“a local planning authority that is proposing to make site allocations for use of land in a local development plan that would, if made, result in the granting of permission in principle, must carry out notifications and publicity equivalent to that which is required when an application is made for outline planning permission.””.
Earlier, the Minister said there was evidence that lots of people were getting involved in local plans nowadays and that that was very successful. It is true at neighbourhood plan level, but I do not believe it is true at local development plan level—a process which tends to take place remote from most people. Unless people are told directly that a particular piece of land is going to be allocated for housing in the local plan, they will not get involved and then, by the time they want to be involved, it will be too late.
So what is wrong with the technical consultation? The government document reads:
“Before an application for technical details consent is determined, we do not propose to require by secondary legislation that local planning authorities consult with the community and others before making a decision”.
It goes on to say that local authorities can do so if they wish:
“While we think that it is important for appropriate further engagement to take place at the technical details consent stage, we consider that centrally mandating what should be done risks unnecessarily repeating engagement and takes away an important local flexibility”.
This is very dangerous. It means that a local planning authority simply will not have to do all the usual neighbour notification and public consultation that it has to for a planning application, even if it is a reserved matter. If this happens, it will mean that a lot of people will not know what is being proposed and will not have the opportunity to have their say. It will reduce very substantially the effective involvement in local planning applications that takes place at the moment. I hope that the Government will seriously reconsider this.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I turn first to Amendment 96ZBA. The NPPF and our planning practice guidance stress the importance of early pre-app engagement. Under the current planning application process, applicants often voluntarily engage with local communities when developing their proposals. This can help ensure that development is locally supported and makes for a more positive application process. In the same way, applicants will be able to engage the community, as they often do, in their detailed design at technical details consent stage.
We introduced compulsory pre-app consultation for onshore wind development above an appropriate threshold through provisions in the Localism Act 2011. This was to ensure that early community engagement took place to improve the quality of proposed onshore wind development, helping to ameliorate local community concerns and perceptions towards these types of projects. We have not extended the compulsory pre-app development to any other type of planning permission, and therefore I do not see the case for extending it to technical details consent.
I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, that we envisage that the technical details consent stage will draw on the existing planning application process, including arrangements for publicity. We are currently consulting on the application process for technical details consent. We welcome the views and expertise of noble Lords to help us to develop arrangements set out in secondary legislation. As regards the consultation on technical details consent, we do not explicitly propose to require that local authorities consult on an application for technical details consent, but we are seeking views on encouraging consultation to take place through statutory guidance to the extent that local authorities consider appropriate views.
Amendment 100ZAZC would add publicity and consultation requirements before a grant of permission in principle. I hope that the noble Lord will be reassured to hear that we intend to set out publicity and consultation requirements before a grant of permission in principle. The Bill already provides for us to set this out in secondary legislation. This will be the case whether permission in principle is granted through a locally prepared plan or on application.
We are also currently consulting on the application process for technical details consent. As I set out in relation to Amendment 96ZB, we envisage that technical details consent will draw from the existing planning application process. However, because the permission in principle followed by the technical details consent is a new route in obtaining planning permission, it would be inappropriate to place a requirement in the Bill that fully duplicated the current outline and reserved matters stage. As I mentioned, we will set out the application process for technical details consent in secondary legislation once our current consultation closes. I would be extremely interested to hear noble Lords’ views on how to strike the balance between the permission in principle and the technical details consent stage.
Amendment 96F is intended to ensure that local communities and others are consulted by local authorities before land is included in their registers. I understand the noble Lord’s concern and agree that an appropriate level of consultation will be important when authorities are preparing and updating their registers. However, local authorities will be expected to assess the suitability of all relevant sites for inclusion in their registers. As part of that process, we will also expect them to identify which of those sites they consider suitable for permission in principle for housing. Where an authority proposes to grant permission in principle for housing on sites in registers, consultation will be mandatory. As I said earlier, regulations will set out the procedures to be followed. Where authorities do not intend to grant permission in principle for a site included in a register, we propose to give them discretion to consult their local communities and interested parties about those sites. This approach recognises that local planning authorities are best placed to determine whether consultation would be helpful, and it provides authorities with flexibility to adapt their approach in particular circumstances. I hope that with those comments, noble Lords will feel free not to press their amendments.
Baroness Andrews
My Lords, I must confess that I am a bit confused. I will have to read Hansard carefully. At the moment, we have a pre-application process which is robust and successful, and local authorities engage with that successfully, because, essentially, a good development has the support of the local community. These will be massive housing developments in some cases and they will require the local communities to be happy with what will be on offer. Of course the local authority should make the decision but I hope that we would have some discipline around this so that, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, says, we will not go down a path where less and less influence is exercised by people who have to live alongside or even within these developments.
Having said that, of course I will withdraw the amendment, but this is a very important part of the Bill. I am not certain that I like the idea of your Lordships being entirely responsible for the secondary legislation, as we seem to be increasingly asked to be. We need to know how people who will have to administer this measure feel about it. That is why we need to know local authority views on these things. Clearly, we will think again about the measure before Report. I may seek a meeting with the noble Baroness to see whether we can tease out this issue with some degree of certainty, because it is very important. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I tabled this as a sweep-up, in case we had missed something. I am not sure there is anything, but there may be one or two things. I was going to put it in a group, but the Labour Party said they wanted to keep it separate. Perhaps they have got something to say.
A couple of questions have occurred to me during the debate. One of the curiosities of getting planning permission is that anybody can apply for it for any piece of land. Is that also going to apply to permission in principle? That is something for the Minister to think about.
The second question is slightly more substantive. We are told that permission in principle is just for housing, in the Bill or anywhere else. There may be other things associated with housing development, such as shops or local offices, but so long as it is housing led that is okay. In local development plans, allocations of land are usually for housing. In most cases, they do not say “housing with shops”. When it comes to applying for planning permission, if people want a little area in the middle of the housing with two or three shops, everyone says that is wonderful and gives permission for it. How will permission in principle work in terms of categories? Will it have to be in the local plan, or the brownfield site register, that it is housing with associated ancillary things? If so, categories in local plans are going to have to be substantially revised. I just thought of that question and it seems to be a practical thing that needs to be looked at.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I confirm to the noble Lord that it would have to be categorised as housing-led development. For permission in principle to be granted, it would have to be categorised by size, location and type of development. I hope that reassures the noble Lord.
I hope that, through the course of this evening, I have been able to demonstrate that, rather than removing the role of local authorities and communities, the true aim of the measure is to help them in developing their plans. I have given assurances that the choice of where and to what permission in principle is granted is a local one, taken by local authorities or neighbourhood forums through their existing plan-making process. I hope the noble Lord now feels able to withdraw his opposition to Clause 136.
Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves
My Lords, this clause is effectively about brownfield registers and we have already covered some of the points I will make in moving Amendment 96B and speaking to the other amendments in my name.
Amendment 96B probes whether other registers are being considered and, if so, what they are and whether they will grant permission in principle like brownfield registers.
Amendment 96E probes how a register being in “two or more parts” will work. We have been informed that one part of the register will be of brownfield sites in general and the other of brownfield sites which are suitable for housing and will therefore get permission in principle. However, I am not sure how that will work and whether there are other distinctions or divisions.
Amendment 96G puts on record that nonsense sometimes creeps into legislation, though I do not blame the Minister or her colleagues on the Front Bench for this. Clause 137 says that regulations will,
“confer a discretion on a local planning authority, in prescribed circumstances, not to enter in the register land of a prescribed description that the authority would otherwise be required to enter in it”.
I have not got a clue what that means—perhaps the Minister can tell us in plain English. Indeed, perhaps the Minister can prescribe what it means.
Amendment 97C refers to an even more nonsensical provision in the Bill. Again, I do not blame anybody on the Government Front Bench or in the Chamber, but new Section 14A(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 reads:
“The regulations may confer power on the Secretary of State to require a local planning authority … (a) to prepare or publish the register, or to bring the register up to date, by a specified date; … (b) to provide the Secretary of State with specified information, in a specified form and by a specified date, in relation to the register. … In this subsection ‘specified’ means specified by the Secretary of State”.
I really think we ought to do better than that, and this amendment is a protest.
Amendment 98A probes the definition of “brownfield land”. I am not suggesting that my definition is better than the NPPF’s “previously developed land”, but defining it is important. As the Minister said the other day, this is a hobby of mine. Clearly, brownfield land is land that has previously been developed. I am suggesting that it is also land which,
“is not in use or is being used in such a way that the local planning authority considers that a change of use would be appropriate”.
There is an interesting question there as to how far previously used land that is now being used for a less intensive purpose—for example, an old mill that is now being used as a scrapyard—is classified as brownfield land and how far it is just land that is being used for something different.
Amendment 98A also refers to land,
“not of high environmental or amenity value”,
which just parrots what my noble friend Lady Parminter said more eloquently earlier. Importantly, it goes on to say that this,
“does not mean land which has reverted to a condition in which its use and appearance is that of a greenfield site”.
It used to be almost impossible to reclassify brownfield land as greenfield land. The NPPF came along and its wording is actually quite useful in this respect, but when local authorities are going to be put under a duty to provide a register of brownfield land, including brownfield land that might be suitable for housing, is land still brownfield if it is has grown over and been turned into a wood by natural means or if somebody has taken it over and is grazing sheep on it?
The important thing is that, when compiling a brownfield register, local authorities should be able to make their own judgment about this and not be forced to put on a list of potential housing sites land that has reverted to a wild state, a semi-wild state or some greenfield-type of use and which provides a local amenity. For example, in the ward I represent, there is the site of an old chapel where I can remember the chapel still standing, which is now being registered as a little village green, but that is the result of a series of actions on that land in the past 30 to 40 years and it is now being used as an amenity for residents. There needs to be a system where local authorities are not forced to say, “Yes, this used to be brownfield land and therefore it has to have housing on it now”, even if that is not the local view. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, if Amendment 97D in this group is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 98 for reasons of pre-emption.
Lord True
My Lords, I will be brief and I will not repeat the rather impassioned speech I made another day on why these wretched registers cannot be more dynamic and give local authorities a bit more power and action to get on with the job.
The thing I am rather curious about is: what happens as time progresses? If we are to list on a register land that is said to be suitable for housing and over time there is a great demand for free schools and population growth in urban areas—it is very tight—the local authority might look at that and say, “Well, actually, that could be a school. That might be better than what we were thinking of before as housing”, and might want to delist and deregister. Once it is on the register, in a sense it acquires a “resi-value” because it is listed there as being for housing. But planning is dynamic and evolving.
I do not necessarily expect my noble friend to answer now, but I would like to know how these clunking registers are manoeuvrable when local needs and priorities change—or is it that once it is there for housing, it has to be housing for ever and we just have to get the numbers? Where is the flexibility in changing?
Baroness Young of Old Scone
My Lords, perhaps I may comment on Amendment 97C, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, in which he quoted the comments on “specified” and said that it was a nonsense. A lot of this, alas, arises from the fact that so much of the Bill is going to have to be made flesh in subsequent secondary legislation. We now have available in the Printed Paper Office the outline of the subsequent secondary legislation that is being planned by the Government, including the timetable for consultation on it and when it will be brought before this House as regulations. Some 34 separate pieces of secondary legislation are envisaged, which will come before your Lordships’ House but not, may I say, until the autumn. So we are, regrettably, in a position where we have to buy a pig in a poke on many occasions. I sympathise with the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that new Section 14A(6) appears to be the sort of nonsense that pigs in pokes produce.
While I am on my feet, I should say to the Minister that I am still looking for my flow chart. It is not in the Printed Paper Office.
Lord Stunell
My Lords, I rise to support the direction of travel of my noble friend and to pick up on one of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord True, about the evolution of planning needs in an area that may have received a PIP some years before. It is important to know the answer to that question. It is also linked to what the Minister will tell us is meant by the phrase “housing-led” in the first place. Reference has been made to shops and maybe offices, but no one has mentioned clinics or schools when talking about housing-led. It would be really helpful to understand whether what might broadly be described as civic or public service buildings are included in that omnibus idea of housing-led neighbourhoods or housing-led sites. That is an important clarification that might help some of us to understand more completely what is envisaged here. Certainly if schools and public services buildings have to be identified separately, that raises a whole host of other questions which I do not think we have discussed so far.
I want to say to my noble friend who is concerned about brownfield sites that they are not necessarily only mills. I remember being fiercely lobbied as a junior Minister by two Deputy Speakers of the House of Commons about a country park in Lancashire, which I think was called Cuerdan Valley Park, a reclaimed mining area that is now, as the name suggests, a country park. Both MPs—one Conservative and one Labour, I have to say—were deeply concerned that part of this country park that was being designated as a brownfield site might be sold off for housing. They were very anxious about what would be likely to happen in those circumstances. It is an existing problem rather than just one that might be created by the new circumstances, but bearing in mind the increased importance of brownfield as a definition with a consequence, it would be sensible for the Minister to give some further attention to it.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I do not usually make my first visit to the Dispatch Box at 10 o’clock at night, but perhaps in doing so I ought to draw attention to my interest as a vice-president of the LGA.
I shall address the issues that have been raised in this series of amendments that are basically all probing. The subject of those probes seems to us to be entirely appropriate. They seek further clarification about what other register is envisaged, whether there is to be more than one register, and if there is one for housing, what the other one will focus on. There is also a need to clarify the words “in prescribed circumstances”.
There is concern about the term “specific”. My noble friend Lady Young pointed out that it is not so much the tortuous nature of the language, but that it is indicative of the fact that so much of this Bill is to be dealt with in secondary legislation. We have often debated that issue during the passage of the Bill and no doubt we will continue to do so.
The other issue raised by the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Stunell, was the definition of “brownfield”. It is important that we get clarity on that, given the heightened significance of it to the system that is now being proposed. I will be interested in the Minister’s answer to the question from the noble Lord, Lord True, about how the register can be manoeuvred where things change over time. There might be a different view on what the land should be used for four, five or six years down the track.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
Before I begin my comments, can I just say to the noble Baroness, Lady Young, that apparently the flow chart is in the Printed Paper Office. Someone has been to check and there is a copy waiting for you there.
Before I comment on the specific amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, I want to make some introductory comments—I shall try to keep them brief—that I hope will reassure the House about our proposed approach. I think we agree that previously developed land has an important role to play in delivering much-needed new homes, which is why the Government are putting a range of measures in place to help unlock housing on suitable brownfield sites.
Clause 137 inserts new Section 14A into the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. The power will enable the Secretary of State to make regulations requiring local planning authorities in England to compile and maintain registers of a particular kind of land. We intend to use this power to require local planning officers to compile registers of brownfield land that is suitable for housing development. Brownfield registers will be a valuable tool, providing publicly available information for local communities, developers and others. Making the registers a statutory requirement will ensure that consistent data on brownfield land that is suitable for housing is transparent and kept up to date. This will provide certainty and help to encourage housing investment in local areas. The registers will also help to measure progress against the Government’s commitment to get planning permissions in place on 90% of brownfield land that is suitable for housing by 2020.
As noble Lords have said, we are currently consulting on the policy detail before such matters are set out in regulations. It is our intention that regulations will include, for example, the criteria to determine the suitability of sites to be entered on registers, procedures for consultation prior to entering sites on registers, and information to be included on registers for each site. This power could also be used to require local authorities to prepare other registers of land, for example a register of small sites that would help promote self-build and custom housebuilding—another priority for the Government.
The noble Baroness, Lady Young, now has her flow chart. Excellent.
I understand concerns that the power is too wide in its scope, but I emphasise that the power provides flexibility to use registers as a tool to promote more efficient practice where necessary and appropriate in future. I also point out that if the power was used to bring forward registers of others types of land, that would require secondary legislation, which, of course, would be laid before this House.
I would like to use these introductory comments to offer reassurance on two further points. First, I emphasise that when local authorities make decisions about land to include in brownfield registers they must have regard to the NPPF, any relevant development plan or national policy and advice, as well as any guidance issued by the Secretary of State. We are not proposing any change to the decision-making framework. Secondly, noble Lords are aware that it is our intention that the registers will be used as a mechanism for granting permission in principle for housing on suitable brownfield sites. However, entering a site on a register does not automatically grant permission in principle. That decision will be for local authorities. This means that permission in principle will be granted based on decisions made by local authorities, in line with local and national policy, after consultation.
The regulations will set out the procedures to be followed in relation to consultation with statutory consultees and others so that their views can be considered before any sites are included in registers and granted permission in principle. There are no proposed changes to the way in which relevant material considerations are to be considered for those sites.
I now turn to the amendments. Amendment 96B seeks to amend Clause 137. As I said in my introductory comments, this clause provides flexibility to use registers to promote more efficient practice where necessary and appropriate in future. I gave as an example our proposals, on which we are currently consulting, for a small sites register, which would help promote self-build and custom housing. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, asked whether the small sites register could grant PIP, and the answer is no, it could not.
Amendment 96E would narrow the scope of the power by placing some of the criteria determining the suitability of sites in primary legislation. I hope that my earlier comments have reassured the noble Lord about the Government’s intended use of the power. A minimum site threshold for brownfield registers will not necessarily be applicable for registers of other types of land. That is why it would not be appropriate to set out the threshold in primary legislation. The noble Lord may find it helpful to know that it is our intention to set a minimum site-size threshold of a quarter of a hectare, or sites capable of supporting five dwellings or more. We are currently consulting on our proposals. Following the consultation, and taking into account the responses received, we will set out our proposals in regulations.
Amendment 96G seeks to expand local planning authority discretion to exclude land from their registers. Subsection (4)(c) makes provision to allow authorities some discretion to exclude land from their register. For example, the Secretary of State might make provision for authorities to exercise their discretion in exceptional circumstances, such as when development of the land would be particularly controversial and the authority considers that development decisions should be made through the usual planning application route.
Amendment 97C seeks to remove subsection (6) which provides the Secretary of State with a power to require an authority to prepare or publish a register or bring a register up to date by a specified date. It would also provide a power to require specific information. Brownfield land plays an important role in helping to provide much needed housing. I have already emphasised how important it is to have consistent data on suitable brownfield land that are made publicly available and kept up to date. That will assist developers and communities, help to encourage investment in housing and help to measure progress against the Government’s manifesto commitment. The requirements in subsection (6) will act as an effective incentive to ensure that local authorities make this information available in a transparent and timely manner.
Amendment 97D would remove the requirement to have regard to national policy, the development plan and guidance. Registers will be a tool to provide consistent, up-to-date information on brownfield sites that are suitable for housing. It is our intention that registers will complement local plans; both are designed to promote suitable sites for development. The clause requires decisions about which sites to include on registers to have regard to the NPPF and the relevant local plan. We also propose that strategic housing land availability assessments, which identify future housing land supply and inform the local planning process, will be the starting point for identifying suitable sites on brownfield registers. This ensures that sites placed on the register have regard to the authority’s existing plans for their area. I emphasise that local authorities will be required to consult the public and other interested parties about sites on their registers for which they intend to grant permission in principle for housing. When authorities intend to enter a site on their register but are not proposing permission in principle, they will have discretion to consult the public and others before making a final decision.
Amendment 98A seeks to define brownfield land in primary legislation. As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said, brownfield land is already defined in the NPPF, which encourages the reuse of brownfield land provided that it is not of high environmental value and it has strong policies to protect the natural, built and historic environment. It also requires authorities to ensure that a residential use is appropriate for the location and that a site can be made suitable for its use. I should also emphasise that we are consulting on criteria to determine the suitability of sites. These criteria include consideration of environmental and other constraints that cannot be mitigated. Again, we propose to prescribe these criteria in regulations. To apply a definition in primary legislation would narrow the proposed powers and, we believe, frustrate our intention to use them to compile registers of other types of land.
I am conscious that I have not answered all the questions, particularly the one asked by my noble friend Lord True, so if noble Lords agree, I hope we can go back and check other questions, and where I have not been able to touch on them here I shall certainly do so in writing. I hope that, with that commitment, the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord True
I am grateful to my noble friend for agreeing to write but I am worried about the regulatory burden on local authorities and I wish this to be considered. In the Explanatory Notes there is potentially a register of small sites for self-build and custom housebuilding. There is a register of brownfield land suitable for housing which meets the prescribed criteria. There is another register of land which the local authority thinks might be suitable for permission in principle. There is a further possible register of land that the local authority considers suitable for housing development but only capable of four dwellings or fewer. I have not gone through it in further detail.
We have heard the Minister’s presentation of the various things that will be required. The Government want to monitor whether their manifesto commitments are being fulfilled. Is there going to be reporting back, forms, et cetera? We are going to have regulations about consultation. But who is going to do all this? We will come on later to discuss planning fees. We cannot afford to keep fully stocked planning departments and offices doing all this. I do not expect an answer now but I beg my noble friend with her officials before Report to give us a clear view of the burdens that are going to be imposed on local authorities, because the more I listen, the more there seem to be.
Lord Stunell
I fully understand that the Minister is going to write to us but if she could give us a hint about whether or not public service buildings, schools and clinics are included in the housing-led concept at this stage, that would be really helpful.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, the Government Chief Whip has walked in so he will want me to beg leave to withdraw my amendment. I just want to say two things. First, I thank the Minister for a very comprehensive response to this series of brownfield questions we have all been asking. The only point I will pick up again is this: if the Secretary of State is to give guidance or send out regulations to authorities, will the Government please pay particular attention to the question of brownfield turning to greenfield over a period of time? Local authorities need the discretion to decide when that transition has occurred. Otherwise what is clearly, to everybody’s eyes, now a greenfield site will have to be built on because it used to have development on it 40 or 50 years ago or whenever it was. That is an important issue but I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
“( ) A register of land under this section is a local development document.”
Lord Greaves
My Lords, these are just two straight questions about the status of the register. Will it be a local development document or will it be a development plan document? I beg to move.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
Amendments 96C and 96D seek to define registers as local development documents and development plan documents. I understand that the noble Lord wishes to ensure that the process of preparing and maintaining registers has similar protections to development plan documents and local development documents but I hope I can reassure him that our proposals already include strong protections.
Brownfield registers are not intended to set out policy. By contrast, local development documents and development plan documents set out an authority’s policies relating to the development and use of land in its area. Registers would be a tool to provide consistent, up-to-date information on brownfield sites suitable for housing. It is our intention that registers will complement local plans. Both are designed to promote suitable sites for development. As I noted in my introductory comments, decisions about which sites to include on registers will have to have regard to the NPPF and the relevant local plan. We also propose that strategic housing land availability assessments will be the starting point for identifying suitable sites on brownfield registers.
I emphasise that local authorities will be required to consult the public and other interested parties about sites on their registers for which they intend to grant permission in principle for housing. Where authorities intend to enter a site on their register but are not proposing permission in principle, they will have discretion to consult the public and others before making a final decision. I hope that with those assurances the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
I am grateful for that reply. I think the answer is no. I have the information I wanted, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
“14B Viability of brownfield sites: gap funding(1) A local planning authority may decide not to include a brownfield site on a register established under section 14A if, after they have assessed the viability of development of the site for housing, they think that it is not viable.(2) Where subsection (1) applies, a local planning authority may make a request to the Secretary of State for sufficient financial support to make viable a housing development on the site.(3) The Secretary of State must consider such a request and either provide the requested support or give reasons for refusal in writing.(4) If the site becomes viable for housing development, by means of a contribution from the Secretary of State or otherwise, the local planning authority may add it to the register.”
Lord Greaves
My Lords, Amendment 98B is about the viability of brownfield sites and what happens to brownfield sites which local people and the local authority wish to see developed for housing but which are not viable. The amendment then goes on in a rather cheeky way to suggest that the Secretary of State should cough up some money to make them viable.
There are a lot of genuine brownfield sites in areas such as Lancashire and Yorkshire. They may still have structures on them, or they may have been removed. In some cases, they may have been remediated, or they may be perfectly good flattened sites ready for development. The problem is that nobody will develop them because there is no profit to be made from building houses on them. There is an old works in the ward I represent on the council in Colne. The outside walls of the mill are still there. We have been trying to get it developed for housing for 10 or 15 years now. We nearly got there before the credit crunch in 2008 and the collapse of house prices. We got the owner to apply for full planning permission, and he got permission for about 20 houses in three blocks. The area is surrounded by terraced houses. It was a nice little development. He was proposing to sell the site on to a local builder who was going to develop it. The local builder is not there any more. The council’s joint venture development company has done a viability assessment of the site and, even with a subsidy from the council, it is not viable. The total cost of developing it is around £130,000 per house, but the sale price for new terraced three-bedroom houses in that area is £100,000. It is simply not viable.
Another site in the same town was cleared under housing market renewal about 10 years ago, but the problem is that it is on quite a steep slope. It is remediated and perfectly ready to develop for perhaps a dozen houses. It is possibly just viable with some help from the council on the basis that the council owns the land and will put the land into the scheme for free. This is the kind of thing we are talking about. There must be dozens of brownfield sites in east Lancashire of this nature which simply cannot or will not be developed—although everybody wants to see them developed for housing. That is the obvious use for those sites and it would benefit the area, help to regenerate it and provide much-needed local housing for people. Nevertheless, because of the local housing market, they are not viable.
I have two questions apart from the question of what the Government or the Secretary of State will do about this to help us fill the gap. It is no good doing what they have been doing so far, saying that they will provide loans. You provide loans to get a scheme going, but if over a period of 30 years of selling the properties or renting them out in the short run the scheme does not add up, the loan is no use because you cannot repay it. It needs gap funding. The council itself has money to help with gap funding of sites like this, and we hope to move ahead with one very soon, but this is typical of a lot of places in the north of England—perhaps in smaller towns, away from the big cities—where brownfield sites like this are simply not viable.
First, therefore, the question is: do such sites go on the brownfield register—the big register, with all the sites on? Do they go on that register to get planning in principle, and what is the point of getting that when any scheme on them will get planning tomorrow? Therefore, what use is the brownfield register to these types of sites? Secondly, we keep reading that the Government have lots of money for brownfield sites: the Chancellor in his Budget announced £1.2 billion or £1.3 billion—I think it was the same £1.2 billion that had been announced some months previously, but that does not matter. This money keeps being announced, but whenever we look at it we find that it is for remediation schemes, and we do not need remediation money; we need pure, simple gap funding.
That is a plea from the heart, from the heart of the Pennines, because we want to develop these sites and we cannot, because they are not viable. Gap funding is needed, and we need some help from central government as well as from local funds. However, my questions were also about the brownfield register and how non-viable sites like that would fit in with the register and its purpose. I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I am slightly puzzled by the tenor of the noble Lord’s argument. I quite understand his point that no profit can be made by building for sale on these sites. However, that raises the question of why he is looking only at building for sale. Why cannot a site like that be used for social housing? That seems to be the obvious answer in many ways. Of course it is slightly subverted by two things, which affect the potential for local authority or housing association housebuilding. One is the right to buy, which will ultimately accrue, and the second is of course the reduction in rents that will be charged by housing authorities, which will reduce their capacity to invest in either their current stock or in new building. To look at such sites as sites for social housing provision is a better way of dealing with them than to seek some sort of subsidy for private sale, which will ultimately result in people making a gain out of what would probably be better as social housing. Therefore the noble Lord might want to reconsider the whole nature of his approach.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, it is very simple. Housing associations are organisations which have to run commercially. They therefore judge the viability of their new-build schemes on the basis of contributions that they get from the Housing and Communities Agency, contributions they put into it themselves, the cost of managing and repairing the properties over 30 years and the rents they will get in during that period.
We are an area which has not only low house prices but low rents, so there is a limit to what we can charge. These sites have been looked at in great detail. Some of them have been developed by the council in co-operation with the main housing association, which is the Stock Transfer Housing Association. The sites I am talking about, however, are simply not viable for social housing, just as they are not viable for anything else. The numbers do not add up, whether you are building for rent, for sale or for partial schemes. In some sites they do. For example, the council has developed some sites in Briarfield, where a majority of the houses have been sold, and in order to make the scheme viable and for other good reasons, some of them have been sold to the housing association. We are working together wherever possible, but the fact is that building new houses on a lot of the brownfield sites in a lot of these places, and certainly in Lancashire and neighbouring parts of Yorkshire, simply is not viable. Therefore, there has to be gap funding and some sort of subsidy—not a huge one, but it has to be there to make it possible.
Lord Beecham
I can see the argument for housing association provision, but I would not have thought it would run to the same extent, or at all, for the local authority itself doing the building because it would have a housing stock and a housing revenue account. It certainly has to balance that housing revenue account, but those costs can be spread, I would have thought, in a way that a housing association might find difficult. I still think there is a difficulty.
Lord Greaves
Some local authorities were sensible enough, or foolish enough, according to your view—I was against what we did in our local authority, but we did it—to get rid of all their council housing. In our case, it was as a result of a quite disgraceful bribe from the previous Labour Government which people felt they simply could not turn down. It really was shocking, the amount of money that was thrown into it—not shocking for the tenants and the houses, because a lot of money went into those houses as a result of the stock transfer, and the local authority had all its debt written off as a result. The whole thing was a public scandal, but very good for the housing estates in Pendle. However, we do not have a housing revenue account, so we cannot do it. What we do is build properties through our development company, a half-owned council development company, highly successful, but, again, it has to be done. We do it on the basis of a 5% or 8% mark-up, profit, compared to the commercial people, who want 15% or even 20% on such sites.
Lord Beecham
I stand corrected on the experience of Pendle, but that is not necessarily typical, one hopes. I look to the Minister to take the point that I made in respect of other authorities, which are perhaps not in quite the vulnerable position that Pendle appears to be. That means, again, looking at local authorities building houses, whether on brownfield sites or elsewhere. There is no incentive in the Bill for that to happen, so I ask the Minister to consider, again, the role of local authorities in providing housing, not just on brownfield sites but more generally.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for his amendment. I reassure him that the Government are fully committed to unlocking new homes on brownfield land, which is why we are creating the £2 billion Home Building Fund to provide the investment in infrastructure and land remediation needed to support major housing developments. The fund will provide long-term loan funding to help unlock or accelerate a pipeline of 160,000 to 200,000 homes. It will support our key manifesto commitment to create a brownfield regeneration fund and to fund housing zones to transform brownfield sites into new housing. The new fund will be available to builders and housing developers across England.
I emphasise that the criteria on which we are consulting to assess the suitability of sites for brownfield registers will include a consideration of site viability. We would expect a site that was not viable to be unlikely to go on the register. I reassure the noble Lord that viability is central to our proposals and ask him to withdraw this amendment.
Lord Greaves
I am grateful for that reply. My only comment is that I want the Minister to say that non-viable sites will go on the register and that, together, we will work to find ways of making them viable and develop them. If the fund is now £2 billion instead of £1.2 billion or £1.3 billion, will somebody please tell me how we can get our hands on some of it, because we will use it well and build lots of new houses on brownfield sites? I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Clement-Jones
“Permitted development: change of use to residential use
Where the Secretary of State, in exercising the powers conferred by sections 59 (development orders), 60 (permission granted by development order), 61 (development orders: supplementary provisions), 74 (directions etc as to method of dealing with applications) or 333(7) (regulations and orders) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, makes a general permitted development in respect of change of use to residential use as dwelling houses, the change must first be subject to prior approval in respect of the impact of neighbouring buildings which have been in continuous and unchanged use for at least one year on the amenity and enjoyment of the prospective residents of the dwelling houses.”
Lord Clement-Jones
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 100 in my name and those of the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Kennedy. I am very much third sub off the bench this evening. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, is very disappointed not to be present after waiting for eight sittings of this Committee to move this amendment, but we share a strong interest in the viability of live music venues, so I hope that your Lordships will accept this inadequate substitute.
Some of the concern about the fate of live music venues derives from a report, London’s Grassroots Music Venues Rescue Plan, produced last year by the Mayor of London’s Music Venues Taskforce, which suggested that while London’s music industry is generating billions of pounds for the economy, a vital part of this important cultural as well as economic sector is under threat. The taskforce, set up by the mayor last year and chaired by the Music Venue Trust, undertook an audit of grass-roots music venues and found that from 2007 to 2015 London had seen the number of spaces programming new artists drop from 136 to just 88.
The situation was mirrored more recently in UK Music’s Bristol live music census, published only this month by Bucks New University. It found that 50% of the city’s music venues were affected by development, noise or planning issues. Those issues pose a direct threat to the future of Bristol’s vibrant ecosystem, which generated some £123 million towards the local economy in 2015 and supported 927 full-time equivalent jobs. So it is an important issue in both those localities and not confined to the metropolis.
One problem faced by live music venues arises when residents move in to an area where noise is emanating from long-standing music venues. The residents make complaints about the noise, and, despite the fact that in most cases the volume levels have remained the same for many years, a complaint has to be dealt with by the local authority and often results in additional licensing restrictions. Such restrictions can limit the venue’s ability to generate income and can be extremely costly to put in place, so this is a major issue when new residents move in and are affected by existing venues.
The London rescue plan advocates, among other policies, support for what is called the agent-of-change principle, and this is reflected by these two amendments. The agent-of-change principle puts the responsibility for noise management measures on the agent of change—that is, the incoming individual or business. This could be a resident moving into a flat near an existing music venue, or a developer that is building a new music venue near an existing residential building. The principle has already been adopted elsewhere—for example, in parts of Australia and the United States—and is proving successful. At present, developers have no legal obligation to sound-proof new residences, forcing developers to spend significant amounts fending off noise complaints, abatement notices and planning applications. The Music Venue Trust has warned that the Government’s 2013 amendments to permit offices, car parks and disused buildings across the country to be converted to residences without planning permission have made the potential situation for venues even worse.
The genesis of these amendments to the Bill is that they were tabled in Committee in the Commons. It appears that Ministers were sympathetic to the case being made but did not, at the end, accept the amendments. Amendment 99 would ensure that residents of buildings converted to residential use are protected from factors, particularly noise, affecting their amenity and enjoyment when buildings are converted to residential use by virtue of a general permitted development order. Such measures would become the responsibility of the agent of change of the permission. Amendment 100 would ensure that residents of buildings converted to residential use are protected from factors, particularly noise, affecting their amenity and enjoyment. Such measures would, again, be the responsibility of the agent of the change of the permission.
Things have moved on since the debate in the Commons. A letter dated 10 March was sent by Brandon Lewis, the Minister for Housing and Planning, and his colleague the Minister for Local Growth and the Northern Powerhouse. It indicates that the Government are amending the permitted development right to include a provision to allow the local planning authority to consider noise impacts on new residents from existing businesses in the area. This is a significant change in the current position. I very much welcome the contents of that letter and I believe that the necessary regulation has now been laid. It is worth quoting part of the letter:
“From the 6 April, a developer will be required to seek prior approval from the local planning authority in relation to the noise impacts on new residents before a change of use from office to residential can be carried out under permitted development. It will in effect allow local authorities to take account of national planning policy and guidance on noise, in a similar way to a planning application, as well as any material concerns raised by owners of music venues in relation to noise. This will help to ensure that before residents move into new housing in close proximity to well-established businesses, including music venues, local authorities are able to require the applicant to put in place noise mitigation measures where appropriate”.
That is all very welcome, but there are quite a number of questions about how this is to be interpreted when the new regulations come into effect on 6 April. For example, is there any intention to apply these regulations to situations where new build as opposed to conversion takes place? If not, why not?
Lord True
My Lords, I also have amendments in this group, although they are unrelated, but I will speak to them now so as not to delay the matter. I hope that I will not test the patience of my noble friend the Chief Whip, but we have had a reasonably lengthy speech. I am about to speak about a matter of fundamental importance so far as my local authority is concerned to people who live there and other local authorities in the London area. It concerns a grave injustice that is being carried out and I intend to pursue a remedy, come what may, in your Lordships’ House. I hope that that will not be necessary and that the Government will listen.
The amendments relate to a specific issue, which is the impact of the proposal pushed through in 2013 to allow the automatic conversion of offices of B1 use, to use the jargon, to be converted to residential C3 use without full planning permission. At the time, many local authorities in London asked the coalition Government not to proceed with this step. I remember some testy meetings at the time, but of course the man in Whitehall knew best. We were told we could pass so-called Article 4 directions. We have explained now and many times since the problems of Article 4 directions, but again, the man in Whitehall knew best. We reminded Ministers of the principle of localism and not imposing a one-size-fits-all policy across the country but to let local authorities decide what was beneficial or damaging to the local economy. But I am afraid, again, the man in Whitehall knew best and the order was imposed in 2013 allowing automatic conversion of office to residential use.
Under the procedure, councils’ residents and office workers—the people who work there—cannot object to these changes, except on the limited grounds of flooding, contaminated land and traffic. There is no consideration of the impacts on employment or on patterns of commuting. There is no requirement to meet space standards. There is no distinction between offices that are occupied and those that are not, and absolutely no provision for affordable housing, which is what the Bill is supposed to be about, among other things.
What has happened since in high-value residential areas such as mine? It was entirely predictable; we predicted it at the time. The consequences, at first sad, are now immoral and, for some families, bordering on the tragic. I will take some examples from my borough, but the London Councils brief shows that there are problems in many parts of London. Developers, driven by greed and with no social obligation, are asset-stripping high streets for housing, without any contribution to schools, transport or health. There is profit for the developers; the community picks up the ancillary cost.
By autumn 2014, Richmond Borough alone had lost 56,500 square metres of offices—almost 20% of the space in our borough. By April 2015, that had risen to 25% of office space, despite the attempt to contain this with Article 4 directions. The latest figure I have is of 234 prior approval applications granted, with a loss of almost 30% of our office space. I have to hand information on 143 of these prior approvals. Of them, 61 were empty. They are cases where a council such as mine would probably have given permission anyway, but with a social contribution from the developer. Some 22% of the offices turned into homes were partly occupied, and 50 offices, with nearly 15,000 square metres, were fully occupied. Yes, we are told that 189 residential units may come from those, but at what cost? Businesses were given notice or wound up, with no opportunity for succession, for the sake of a quick buck for the developer.
This bleeding of employment space is creating bottlenecks of supply in various parts of London, as the London Councils report indicates. Potential sites for free schools are being lost. The Government are cutting off their nose to spite their face: the policy means that the Education Funding Agency has to pay above odds to buy “resi-value” offices. At a recent public meeting I held, a doctors’ practice wishing to expand to serve new residents moving into new homes in the area complained that it cannot now find space in the area because the offices that they had in mind are being converted to houses. In our council’s latest business survey, 20% of businesses with between six and 10 employees said that they found it hard to find premises. The gearing between residential and office values in Richmond is up to £4 of residential value for every £1 of office value. It is a no-brainer for those after quick money: double your money, double it again and catch the plane to Bermuda, with not one penny in compensation to those who lose their jobs or business places, or the communities that bear the costs.
My Amendment 101B in this group, which I will not talk to given the hour, provides for compensation in these cases to those tossed out, and to the community. The quantities may not be right—I will hear an argument from the Government about that—but surely the principle is unarguable.
My borough has the largest number of these so-called prior notifications, but it is a widespread picture of growing damage across London. Well over 100,000 square metres of occupied space—businesses no longer there—have been lost in London. Rents are rising in many areas, deterring investment. Around 7,000 dwellings have been agreed in schemes of 10 units or more across London, which might, in the normal planning process, have yielded nearly 1,000 affordable homes. This way, there are none.
Article 4 could certainly be improved. Councils could be allowed to take into account impacts on jobs; local authorities could be allowed to charge fees. Article 4 directions could apply immediately, without risk of compensation claims, and I support the thrust of Amendment 100ZAZB in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. But ultimately, the answer is two “L”s: localism and listening.
My amendment is about localism—it is not to be prescriptive, but concessive; not to be centralist but localist. It allows those who want the Government’s order to have it and I have been told that, in some areas, it is very welcome and has been very helpful. They can frame the order on the wall of the mayor’s office if they want to, with a portrait of the Minister alongside. My amendment allows an affected local authority to opt out of the order, where it is doing damage, in the interests of the well-being of its community and to protect jobs. What possible rational objection could there be to this, except the “They shall not pass” principle about which I was talking the other day.
When I put down this amendment, I was very disappointed to see that, very shortly afterwards, the Government arrogantly tabled an order making this prior approval permanent, without waiting even to hear your Lordships’ arguments or discussion on this subject. In my submission, that was a shabby way to treat Parliament and this House. It would be possible for this House to pray against that order and sweep away this whole policy. If that happened, it would go where it was wanted and where it was not wanted. In my view, that would be exceeding the proper performance of this House, but it could happen. Or we could take my approach. Let it stay where it is wanted and end it where it is damaging the economy and costing jobs.
I beg my Front Bench and my Government to listen. What morality, what principle, can there be in a policy—a Conservative policy—that puts hard-working people out on the streets, destroys jobs and enriches those who speculate at the expense of those who create? I find that shameful. I cannot explain it to my residents and it is profoundly, morally wrong. I beg this Government to listen and to think again.
Lord Tope
My Lords, once again I support the noble Lord, Lord True, in as strong terms as he has spoken to his amendment. I added my name to it for the same reason. Until May 2014, I represented a town centre ward in an outer London suburb and I saw the start of this. As the noble Lord, Lord True, said, it was entirely predictable and, sadly, the predictions have possibly more than come true. I, too, could quote statistics from my borough which are very similar to those which the noble Lord, Lord True, quoted but, at this time of night, I am not going to. I simply say that, in Sutton town centre—the area I represented for 40 years—between the coming into effect of prior approvals and 29 January 2015, when the Article 4 direction took effect, 28% of the office space was lost, just in that 18 months or so. That trend has continued.
One of the many arguments against these indiscriminate prior approvals is that they do not distinguish between occupied and vacant offices. Among the statistics given to me from the research done by the London Borough of Sutton was that 62% of the office space lost in the borough was either occupied or at least partly occupied. There are many other statistics to back it up, but the conclusion given to me by the council—and I am no longer a councillor—says:
“The situation has now reached such a stage that the council’s economic development assessment states that the borough has an under supply of office space for the next 15 years”.
The noble Lord, Lord True, is absolutely right. I will happily join him in his campaign, although I am no longer a London councillor.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord True, on his amendment. He is absolutely right to deplore the Government’s imposition of this rule, effectively allowing the conversion of commercial properties in high streets to residential, without any consideration of local need or the property market and to the detriment of the high street. This is Mary Portas in reverse. As the noble Lord said, it is an extraordinary step for a Conservative Government to take.
On an earlier day in Committee, I raised the issue of property guardians and the possible exploitation of people being housed on a very temporary basis in buildings awaiting development. That is an undesirable state of affairs, but this provision is worse because here we are seeing not just buildings that have become empty over time but buildings that are deliberately being emptied of their current occupants, comprising businesses contributing to the local economy, to make profits for private developers, as the noble Lord rightly said, on which he was supported by the noble Lord, Lord Tope. The system is thereby exclusively tilted in their favour without any regard whatever to local circumstances or the views of local people or local authorities. It is another example of the Government imposing their policies with complete disregard for the localism which they repeatedly proclaim is their watchword, and is totally indefensible.
The noble Lord’s amendments are quite lengthy but very much to the point and deal very effectively with the problem that he described. I hope that the Government will look again very carefully at what they are doing. Have they made any assessment of the impact of their policy? We have a very poor impact assessment for the Bill. What kind of impact assessment was undertaken when the Government made the decision to change the planning system in the way that they have in this respect? Where did they look for evidence of the impact? Did they consider the position in London, where there is huge pressure in any case on the housing market and huge pressure for the provision of residential accommodation? That should be met by properly thought through housing development and not at the expense of the local economy and local business. For example, have the Government consulted local chambers of commerce in London or anywhere else where these measures have been implemented? Can the Minister tell us what is happening up and down the country in terms of the number of conversions? We have heard very telling figures from two noble Lords in relation to their authorities. Do the Government have any idea what the national position is and what the impact has been not just in terms of the numbers of people but the viability of the local high street—and not just in terms of shopping, as the noble Lord said? He cited the case of a medical practice, and there will be other services as opposed to simple retail, important though that is, which will find life increasingly difficult.
It would be interesting to learn exactly what the Government know about the situation. Have they conducted any kind of review? Will they conduct any kind of review into what is happening on our high streets? Where does the process end? Is there any indication of even a balance of residential property with office and commercial and other uses of property in the high street? If not, the Government have failed lamentably to fulfil their responsibility to look at the picture in the round and, above all, to consult localities. There may be different approaches in some places. Some areas may be ready to accept conversions of this kind, but that is what a planning process is for. It is not a matter to be laid down arbitrarily by Whitehall.
I strongly support the noble Lord’s amendment. He may not call a Division on it today—I assume that he will not—but if we get to Report without any indication from the Government that they are prepared to change their position on this, I hope that he will test the opinion of the House. I can say with confidence that the Opposition will support him. The Government need to rethink the position they have created and the damaging effects they have caused, and to do so urgently.
Lord Kerslake
I support the amendment and, in doing so, declare my interests as chair of Peabody and president of the Local Government Association. It is worth going back to when this policy came in. It was in the context of an economy struggling to recover and the Government’s desire to stimulate development rapidly. It was particularly focused on the issue of office developments that had outlived their useful economic life and an unwillingness on the part of local authorities to contemplate change to an alternative use. That was the context in which the policy came forward. There was considerable debate about the issue, but the difficulty was that what worked in one part of the country may well not have worked in others. The safeguard introduced at the time was, essentially, to allow certain areas to be excluded from the application of the permitted development rights. In reality, only very few areas were excluded. The exclusions were very narrowly drawn to include areas, such as the City, that were very concerned about the issue.
We now know that, while the policy was well intentioned, the consequences have been perverse in some parts of the country, particularly in London and particularly in places of it that we have heard about, such as Richmond and Sutton. Having that information now, it is right that the Government revisit this issue and think again. For the price of a small addition of new housing, we are in danger of denuding significant areas of their economic capacity to grow and develop. The case is compelling: we should learn from how policies have worked in practice and be open to revisiting them.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I support this amendment, because I recognise why this measure was introduced. In parts of the north of England there were lots of shops closing. You could look down a high street and see the first floor of many retail units completely empty. Sometimes they were boarded up, or with ripped curtains and dusty windows: totally unoccupied. The issue has only been one of flexibility. The mistake was that we did not allow local decision-taking. With that at the beginning of the process, this problem would have been avoided.
The statistics on the numbers involved must be available. I presume that the number of units converted from commercial to residential will have entered into the national housebuilding statistics. Can the Minister tell the Committee the exact number involved?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, Amendments 99 and 100 would insert into the Bill requirements on local authorities and others where there are already appropriate protections in national planning policy and guidance to address these issues. National planning policy already incorporates elements of the agent-of-change principle by making it clear that existing businesses wanting to develop in continuance of their business should not have unreasonable restrictions put on them because of changes in nearby land uses since they were established.
The Government recognise concerns about the impact of new residents moving into an area with an established live music venue. As the noble Lord said, my ministerial colleagues met industry representatives in January to discuss this matter. We have responded to their concerns by including a provision in the office-to-residential permitted development right. This enables local authorities to ensure that mitigation measures address noise impacts from existing businesses on the residence. It will both help to protect residents’ amenity and to ensure the sustainability of established businesses.
The noble Lord asked about Scotland and Wales. Of course, planning is devolved there. He also asked if there is a plan to apply new prior-approval measures in relation to noise impact to new builds and not just to buildings undergoing a change of use. The permitted development rights take effect on 6 April and apply to changing the use of buildings from office to residential. The application for new build residential property will be considered under the NPPF, which incorporates elements of the agent-of-change principles. The noble Lord also asked if the regulations will only allow local authorities to take noise into account, not oblige them to do so. The regulations allow local authorities to take account of noise where it is relevant rather than obliging them, because that would be an inflexible requirement.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My noble friend Lord Clement-Jones asked a further question about the retrospective nature of the very welcome government proposals. I absolutely appreciate the real difficulties with retrospective legislation, but what advice and guidance will the Minister give to those music venues which will be affected before the change comes into effect? Can she also say what changes she will make to the guidance being given to local authorities?
So that the Minister is aware how serious this is, it is worth reflecting on the situation of the Fleece in Bristol, which started the campaign to change this. Chris Sharp, who led that campaign, points out that although he is pleased with the Government’s announcement:
“The irony is that the venue that was doing the most to change the law is being left out in the cold”.
It continues to have a problem.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I will write to the noble Lord with details of the revised guidance and in response to the other questions he asked.
Amendments 101A and 101B would allow local authorities to consider the local community’s views and local and neighbourhood plan policies on a wide range of matters under the office-to-residential permitted development right. This has provided greater certainty for developers and has successfully encouraged more development, delivering much needed new homes. As my noble friend knows, where there is a localised impact on the office market, councils have power to remove permitted development rights. The Article 4 direction process provides more robust safeguards than the council resolution proposed by the amendment.
I have heard noble Lords’ words about the impact of this. I understand that 1,600 new homes were developed in London under PDR in 2014, and 8,000 in total. I also understand that it does seem, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said, to be a problem in particular areas of the country. My noble friend and I have spoken about this, and although in Trafford, PDR is very welcome, it is clearly having an adverse impact in Richmond. I suggest that as the hour is late I meet my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Tope, before the relevant part of Report to discuss this further. I am not promising that we can move any further forward—and I understand what my noble friend said—but perhaps we might make some progress.
Moving to amendments 100ZAZA and 100ZAZB. I understand that Amendment 100ZAZA would insert specific requirements for local authorities to consider where permitted development rights allow for the change of use to residential. The amendment is not appropriate and would impose inflexible and unnecessary burdens. Permitted development rights strike a balance between encouraging development by providing greater certainty and allowing local consideration of specified matters. Such matters will depend on the building changing use to residential use. Where there are wider concerns, of course local authorities can make an Article 4 direction.
Amendment 100ZAZB aims to remove the local authority’s liability to pay compensation where an Article 4 direction is issued with immediate effect. It will also allow the local authority to charge a planning application fee where an Article 4 direction requires a planning application to be submitted. Where a local authority brings forward an Article 4 direction, the current compensation provisions, alongside the exemption from paying an application fee, strike a fair and appropriate balance. They recognise that a national right is being withdrawn for development that is considered acceptable while ensuring that the local authority’s liability to pay compensation can be limited.
That said, I reiterate my offer to my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Tope. I realise that what I have said may not have satisfied them, but I ask—
Lord Campbell-Savours
It is very good of the Minister to offer meetings, but we are on the eve of the Recess. The first day we come back we are into Report.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I said I would meet them before Report. This part will not come to Report on day one, which is why I made that offer.
Lord Beecham
Perhaps the Minister will bear with me. She is offering to meet, which is desirable, but does that embrace the two amendments in the noble Lord’s name? Amendment 101A is about local determination and Amendment 101B is about compensation to businesses. Would both those things be on the agenda?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I think my noble friend’s principal concern is the effect on Richmond of the permitted development right, but if he wishes to discuss compensation, of course I will discuss it.
Lord Campbell-Savours
In the event that the Minister meets her officials during the Recess, instead of meeting the two noble Lords, she might care to write to us all and tell us what recommendations are being made. It might save us a lot of time.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I am very happy to write to noble Lords on the back of a discussion.
Lord Beecham
I am sorry to press the Minister, but important though Richmond is, it is not the only place where this is happening. She may not be able to answer this question now, but I hope that the Government have details of what is happening up and down the country on this front. They have imposed this policy across the country; they ought to know what is happening. It would be helpful for those discussions to be a little broader, with all due respect to the noble Lord. The Minister may want to open this up to other Members of the House, because there will be people from different parts of the country whose own experience would be quite helpful. But I hope everything is on the table.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Yes, my Lords. I am not excluding anything; I am simply making the offer to the two noble Lords who raised this issue quite strenuously, and to any other noble Lords who want to attend. I suspect it is not a northern problem but more of a southern problem, but we can discuss all that in due course.
Lord True
My Lords, I apologise for having provoked a lengthy debate at this time, but it is Committee and one’s only chance to put a case. I illustrated it largely with examples from Richmond, but in the London Councils brief there are examples of problems in Croydon, Islington, Camden and Lambeth, which I do not think are Conservative authorities but are all citing difficulties.
I am extremely grateful to my noble friend, and of course I will gladly take up her offer. I hope that another order will not be laid by her friend at the other end before we can meet, because that was a rather unhelpful prelude to our previous meeting.
Lastly, the Minister can have his bone, because it is the Minister at the other end who is calling the shots, and I can have my bone so that my residents and the residents of Croydon and Lambeth have a bit of security. The order can stand and local authorities can be given the power to opt out within this Bill before Parliament. Everyone can be satisfied; those who want it and those who do not. That is what I put on the table, it is what I will take to my noble friend, and I am grateful for the opportunity to do so. But if we cannot meet on that, I will bring this back to the House.
Lord Clement-Jones
My Lords, I am afraid that even as regards Amendments 99 and 100, the Minister has only a partially satisfied customer. As my noble friend has said, it is important that we look in a rather more granular fashion at some of the points that I have raised, particularly on the retrospective aspects and the difference between guidance and putting this on to the statute book.
I am concerned about precisely the point mentioned by my noble friend, which is the example of the Fleece in Bristol, where the local authority played a perfectly proper role. It took account of the NPPF and so on, but in the end it was the Planning Inspectorate that was the real problem. If the local authority is allowed to consider noise impact and then does so, what is the difference between that and the inspectorate perhaps being free or not to take that into account, and therefore it does not impose the same conditions as the local authority? Would it be different if we had something rather more obligatory on a local authority? Would that impose a higher duty on the Planning Inspectorate in those circumstances, thus avoiding the situation that the Fleece found itself in?
I am rather concerned about how strong this particular guidance is going to be. I recognise that the principle is floating around, but how much of a fix do we have on it in order to make sure that the future of our music venues is protected? I am not going to go any further at this time of night, but I would welcome a fairly detailed letter from the Minister. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Time limits for developing land where planning permission is granted
After section 58 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (granting of planning permission: general), insert—“58A Time limits for developing land“(1) Where planning permission is granted under section 58, the person or persons to whom planning permission is granted must develop the land to which the planning permission relates within a specified period of time, which the Secretary of State must by regulations made by statutory instrument specify.(2) Regulations made under subsection (1) must specify that —(a) development on the land must be commenced before the end of five years from the date on which planning permission was granted, and(b) development on the land must be completed before the end of seven years from the date on which development on the land was commenced.(3) Regulations made under this section may make different provision for different purposes.(4) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.””
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, the clock moves towards midnight, and we are on the eighth of nine days where probably the only consensus is that there is a need for more housebuilding. The Bill in its various components seeks to achieve that, by starter homes, self-build and many other means. However, in my view there is an underlying problem which Amendment 100ZA seeks to rectify.
The problem is the very slow development of land banks. As noble Lords will know, large residential developers want to build gradually to make it a near certainty that the properties will sell. Thus it appears that the owners of large sites—I really do mean large sites—reckon to build and complete no more than 100 to 150 properties per annum. This might suit the business plans of large developers, the construction industry, the banks and the financiers, and it might suit the manufacturers of building materials who want to provide a steady supply of bricks rather than deal with highs and lows. But surely this does not suit those who wish to buy a property. It is an element that keeps prices high because of a shortage of completions.
My first thought in drafting the amendment is that we should promote the good old Liberal policy of land value tax, which I am glad to note that some noble Lords can remember—a tax on land that is developed and undeveloped. However, the problem is that for the sanctions to be really effective, the tax would need to increase for each year that the site remains undeveloped. The amendment seeks a more gentle approach—although I would far rather go for a land value tax—so that when planning permission is granted for building on a site, work must be started within five years of the grant of permission. Then to avoid devices where minimal work satisfies this requirement, we add that the development must be completed within seven years of the start date. That is planning permission to action within five years and seven years to complete from the start date. I am not stuck with the five or seven years—I had to put two dates in—but there needs to be some restriction in order to get the developers to move on.
The focus needs to be on the minds of the holders of land banks—and there are holders of large land banks—so that they cannot just sit on the land while housing is in short supply. At present if the development is not started within the time of the planning application, as those of us who have served on planning committees will know, the period allowed—three years, five years—goes by and then the developer comes back to the planning committee and applies for it to be renewed. My planning officers in the London Borough of Barnet, where I was for 28 years, would always say, “Well you gave it to them last time, you’ve got to renew it”. There should not be a presumption where a developer has failed to develop land that they should immediately be given an extension of the planning permission. These land banks need to be developed. Dealing with odd, small brownfield sites will have a benefit but the only way really to increase housing stock is to tackle land banks and those holding the land banks. That is the real world and I hope the Minister when she replies will give me some further assurance. I beg to move.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Under the noble Lord’s proposed new Section 58A(2)(b),
“development on the land must be completed before the end of seven years from the date on which development on the land was commenced”.
Does that mean that if you just put up one house on a huge prospective estate you suddenly find you can extend your period by two years? That is what I read from the amendment. I do not think that was the intention behind it, I am sure.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
My Lords, the intention is to get the development started within five years and finished within seven years so, as the noble Lord says, if you start one house and do nothing else, you will be caught by the fact that within seven years you have to complete the site. That is the protection against people using devices to partially develop a site.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Then why not simply make it subsection (2)(a) on its own with a seven-year limit?
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
Developers work by first applying for planning permission. We are saying that once they have the planning permission there has to be a period in which they start the work and then, being reasonable people, there is a period in which they have to complete that development. That was the seven years. It could be 10 years or whatever any of the Ministers want but I believe there has to be a dual requirement rather than the one the noble Lord suggests.
Lord Porter of Spalding
My Lords, the person the planning permission has been granted to might not necessarily be the one developing the site anyway, so to make the original grantee of the planning permission responsible for development is not practical, or probably legal. As has already been said, some sites will be a phased process so rather than a seven-year arbitrary deadline, developers should be working with local authorities to work out the phases of development and the proposed completion time on the basis of the phased development. If you were to grant somebody a site of 2,000 or 2,500 units, you certainly would not want them all being built within seven years. The way it is worded will work against some areas. I can appreciate that people should not be able to build up land banks without having any intention of bringing it forward, speculatively trying to increase profit on the basis of the land value itself, but the way this amendment is worded will have a detrimental impact on the communities where we try to implement it.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
My Lords, the actual development has to take place with the original developer—but on the suggestion that the developer might change, which I think the noble Lord made, the planning permission goes with the site. Even if the developer changes, the restrictions or advantages are still there. The person who buys the site gets those benefits and restrictions with it.
Lord Porter of Spalding
I totally agree—the land is where the planning permission sits, but that is not what the noble Lord’s amendment says.
Lord Beecham
No, I am not going to sort it out—but I was going to suggest that one way in which to look at it would be to revoke the permission, so that that developer is no longer sitting on it. Does that not work?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I am sorry to contradict a lawyer, and I shall probably get slapped down for it, but the planning permission is usually granted for a site and not for a person. I think that that is the point that my noble friend made. So you would not revoke the permission, because the permission is on the site rather than for the person—or you could, but it would run contrary to anything that planning law has ever done, in my memory anyway. But I am sympathetic towards the intent behind the amendment, because it raises the issue of planning permissions given but the building not happening. That is a challenge within the context of the Government trying to deliver 1 million homes by 2020. However, a requirement fixing a timeframe for both commencing and completing the development is a highly dangerous approach. While I appreciate that this measure is aimed at encouraging the build-out of permissions, it would not be prudent to introduce such a measure without the full and proper assessment of the potential consequences. In particular, careful consideration would be needed of the impact on the viability and deliverability of schemes. It is important to acknowledge that putting a standard time limit on when development should be completed might be unrealistic, given that developments come in different shapes and sizes, as my noble friend Lord Porter, said, and each has its own specific set of issues.
A number of factors can delay both starts on site and completion of development, including market conditions, availability of finance, difficulty discharging conditions and the availability of infrastructure and utilities. Imposing a requirement without considering any legitimate reasons for delay would be a highly risky, unreasonable approach that is likely to introduce fear and a reluctance to enter the market in the first place. It may deter development coming forward, given the added constraints and risks. That is not to say that I do not sympathise when these situations arise because, as a former council leader, I know that it is deeply frustrating. We are trying to encourage the build-out of existing stock of planning permissions and taking it very seriously. The department has already announced a number of measures designed to address these various factors that cause delays on site. They include a £1 billion fund to support small and custom builders to deliver 26,000 new homes, and the £2 billion long-term fund to unlock housing development for up to 160,000 homes announced in the spending review.
I hope that I have been able to set out that, although I agree wholeheartedly with the need to encourage build-out, the amendment is probably not the best way in which to deal with it, as other noble Lords have pointed out.
The noble Lord asked about the presumption to approve if a site has previously had permission. A planning application will always be considered on its planning merits at the time of application, so I do not think that that applies. I hope that with those words I have reassured the noble Lord, and he will feel happy to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
I thank the Minister for her reply. The facts of the matter are that, on large sites, developers, whoever they are, never—or so I am told by people in the industry—develop more than 100 to 150 per annum. There must be some way forward to encourage those developers to build more. The amendment might not be right as it is—I accept the points about five years and seven years—but it was tabled to try to highlight the issue. I actually wondered about years. There must be some way to make sure that developers do not only develop 100 to 150 units on large sites. The reason they do that is to keep up the price of those units. There must be some way to work with the Government to have some provision in the Bill to facilitate that. It may not be the amendment which is before us, but I will reconsider that for Report. At the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) In section 62A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (when application may be made directly to Secretary of State), in each place where it appears except in subsection (1)(a), for “Secretary of State” substitute “Secretary of State or the Mayor of London”.”
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
I rise on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Tope, who is no longer in his place because of the hour at which this amendment is being debated. Amendments 100ZAA and 100ZBB relate to a matter that has come up in previous discussions on this Bill. Clause 139 will allow the Secretary of State to designate a local planning authority for its poor performance in determining applications for categories of development described in the regulations, possibly including non-major development. If a local planning authority is designated, developers may then choose to make an application for development in the poorly performing authority area directly to the Secretary of State.
It is believed that in London the actual consideration should be made by the mayor rather than by the Secretary of State, because the Greater London Authority, as the Minister will know, has significant planning expertise, local knowledge and strong experience of PSI applications, making it a far better place to determine these applications than Whitehall. This change will probably take into account the mayor’s strategic planning role in the capital and the Government’s devolution agenda. So rather like a previous amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Tope, this amendment is saying that in developments of this nature the person best suited to decide would be the Mayor of London rather than the Secretary of State, which would fit in with the Government’s proposals for devolution and localism. I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
Perhaps the noble Lord could help me. The amendment as drafted refers to the substitution of the Secretary of State or the Mayor of London. I take it he means the Secretary of State elsewhere than in London and the mayor in London, but that is not what the amendment actually says. It seems to pose a choice, even in London, which I do not think is the intention.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
There is to be a choice at times. There may be times when it is appropriate for it to be the Secretary of State. This does not completely outlaw the Secretary of State from taking action in this case, but the appropriate person to deal with it in the first instance would be the mayor of the largest city in this country.
Lord Beecham
With respect, that is not what the amendment seems to say. The Minister and I are in rare agreement.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I think we might be. I will start with Clause 139, which amends Sections 62A and 62B of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. It allows the Secretary of State to set out in secondary legislation categories of applications that a local planning authority may be designated for, should their performance fall below the specified threshold. This will allow our existing approach to addressing any instances of underperformance, which currently applies only to major development, to be extended to include applications for non-major development. The existing designation approach has proved successful in speeding up decisions on major development since it was first announced in September 2012. By extending our approach to include non-major development, we are ensuring that all applicants can have confidence in the service to be provided.
We will keep under review the categories of applications on which performance will be assessed to ensure that they remain targeted at the most relevant aspects of the planning process. As the existing designation approach has proved, this measure has several benefits. It encourages improvement and gives applicants the choice of a better service in the very few cases of persistent underperformance. This approach has shown its effectiveness in tackling performance on major development, so it is only natural that we should now bring non-major development within its scope.
I now turn to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Tope, regarding applicants for planning permission having the choice to apply directly to the Mayor of London instead of the Secretary of State where a London borough is designated as poorly performing. I agree that it is essential that the Mayor of London plays an important part in strategic decisions affecting the capital, which is why the mayor already has power to call in for his own decision applications of potential strategic importance—for example, where more than 150 dwellings are proposed.
I should highlight that if applications are submitted directly to the Secretary of State by applicants in areas that are designated as underperforming, Section 2A(1B) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 already provides for the Mayor of London to have the same call-in powers for applications that are of potential strategic importance. This ensures that the mayor can still take the final decision on applications of importance in London. I reassure noble Lords that we value the important role of the mayor in taking strategic decisions in London, and we are taking steps in this Bill to devolve more planning powers to the mayor. With that reassurance, I hope the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor
“Local planning areas: right to request alterations to planning system
(1) A local planning authority in England shall have the right to present to the Secretary of State an alternative approach to planning, and to request that the Secretary of State alters or suspends part or all of planning legislation to allow the alternative approach to be tried.(2) The Secretary of State may approve such a request, save that the Secretary of State may not approve more than 12 such requests.(3) Any such approval be limited to not more than 10 years.”
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (LD)
My Lords, I rise to move this amendment on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, who is unfortunately disabled by a herniated disk. He is flat on his back, which is probably exactly where most of us would like to be. He is probably tucked up in his bed, which is entirely sensible. He might be watching on telly, although I doubt it, but it is perforce, rather than for any other reason.
The reason I agreed to bring this forward is in many ways illustrated by the debates that have been taking place on this Bill. The longer I have been in Parliament, the more I have seen legislation prescribing in detail on a huge range of issues that back when I was selected were not prescribed in legislation. There are all sorts of reasons for Parliament to take the legislative approach, but it creates a situation in which it is very difficult to experiment.
Here I should declare that I have a number of interests in planning. I have worked on policy in the planning arena for many years, I am now visiting professor of planning at Plymouth University and I have worked with successive Governments of all colours on planning policy. One thing that arises when new ideas are being put forward is that we very quickly get to a point where ideas have been welcomed and people would like to see them experimented with, but we are then told that that will require primary legislation. At that point it is immensely difficult to move things forward. Primary legislation does not easily get a slot, but, also, something brought forward through primary legislation is generally rolled out for the country as a whole, and quite rightly in debates like this—as we have heard over the course of the debates on the Bill—people will query how well it has been thought through, whether it will work and whether it is appropriate to do it. But we cannot do it unless we legislate.
Lord Kerslake (CB)
My Lords, I support this amendment. Buried among the thicket of amendments that we have considered in this, I am afraid, rather centralising Bill is a genuinely ingenious and localist approach that we should give serious consideration to. In many ways it mirrors the amendments that came forward during the passage of the Localism Act that paved the way for the city deals. That was a powerful model that opened up new opportunities. The proposed new clause is very open in the way it is described and I am sure that improvements could be made in the drafting, but it is a genuinely localist initiative that would allow different approaches and techniques to be used in different parts of the country.
The proposition in the London Housing Commission report that I chaired—I declare an interest—could help. It proposed that the mayor, through the London Plan, should be able to make that effectively the NPPF for London. If we recognise the fact that we live in a country with different housing markets and different planning environments, we should be open to some experimentation, and this proposed new clause could be very helpful in delivering that.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank noble Lords and in particular the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, for speaking on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, another noble Lord whom we wish well, because they seem to be dropping like flies today—I do not know whether it is the housing Bill or something in the air. I support the key principle in the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Lucas and nobly articulated by both noble Lords that local planning authorities should have a greater role in tailoring the planning system to their local circumstances. This includes potentially having the power to suggest an alternative approach, as set out by the amendment.
I am sure the noble Lord would concede that, as drafted, there are some difficulties with his amendment. It is too broad, and it certainly does not provide the necessary reassurances of certain aspects of planning, such as the right to appeal, which must be retained to provide fairness for applicants. In addition, it does not provide a legal vehicle to support the transfer of the planning freedoms, which would lead to some practical difficulties. These concerns accepted, I applaud my noble Friend in his absence for the inventive approach his amendment proposes, and the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, for articulating it.
The Government are committed to driving up housing supply. I am sure that noble Lords know our ambitions. I think the House will agree that any agreement by the Secretary of State to an alternative planning system in a local area should happen only if that alternative system would deliver additional homes. I want that link to be explicit in any legislation.
I reassure both noble Lords that we are already making strong moves in this area. The Government are exploring a deal-based approach where a local authority requests certain planning freedoms in exchange for delivering housing numbers greater than their objectively assessed housing need. This includes instances where those housing numbers might be delivered by a large site such as a garden village or garden suburb.
I have listened to the thoughtful contributions from noble Lords, and I would like to consider how we can best take forward the key principle of the amendment of my noble Friend, Lord Lucas, particularly in light of the recent publication of the report of the local plans expert group and the consideration of responses to the Government’s recent consultation on the NPPF. I hope this explanation reassures the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, and that he is happy to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor
I thank the Minister for her very positive response. I would have spoken to this amendment whether or not the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, was here. She mentioned some of the proposals, not least on garden villages, which is an approach that I have advocated. I resisted mentioning it myself at this late hour, but there will be other amendments where I may return to that issue, as this is a good example of where that might happen. I am delighted that she has indicated that she will look at this.
I agree with the reservations. I think the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, would have done so as well. The amendment was intended to allow this debate to take place. With the permission of the Committee, I would like to withdraw it.
Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves
My Lords, unlike some of the younger people in this Chamber tonight, I have run out of energy, so I will simply move the first amendment in this group. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the amendments.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, Clause 140 ensures that the likely financial benefits of certain development proposals will be made public when a local planning authority is considering whether to grant planning permission. It applies only to reports, with a recommendation about how a planning application should be decided going to a planning committee or the full authority. It requires local planning authorities to make arrangements for the reports to include a list of certain financial benefits which are likely to be obtained by the authority as a result of the proposed development being completed.
The financial benefits to be listed include local finance considerations, payments under the community infrastructure levy and government grants, or any other benefit set out by the Secretary of State in secondary legislation.
The Secretary of State will also have the power to require a financial benefit to be recorded where it is payable to a person or body other than to the authority making the planning determination. There are powers to set out in regulations any further information about a financial benefit which must be recorded in a planning report—for example, an estimate of the amount.
Not setting out in public the potential financial benefits of planning applications during the decision-making process impacts negatively on local transparency. It prevents local communities understanding the benefits that development can bring to their local area. Therefore, we amended the national planning policy guidance to make it clear that local finance considerations may be cited for information in planning committee reports, even where they are not material to the decision. Despite this change, our concerns remain.
Our intention is not to interfere in the considerations taken into account when planning decisions are made. The effect of this measure, which will not be onerous on local planning authorities, will simply be to make local communities more fully aware of financial benefits which are otherwise non-material to planning decisions and help them understand better the wider impact of development. We are consulting on how we might use the delegated powers included in this clause; for example, on prescribing council tax and business rate revenue, and Section 106 payments, as financial benefits to be listed.
I shall not thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for his amendment because he did not speak to it, but in thinking what he might have said—I struggle to do so at this hour—I should point out that the measure would apply to all planning reports, not just those going to planning committees as set out in Clause 140. Local planning authorities would be required to list any financial benefits or costs received or incurred by not just themselves but any other person. They would also be required to provide any information about the financial costs or benefits without any limits to or guidance about what should be provided. The amendment would introduce substantial ambiguity and huge burdens for local planning authorities. The breadth of information required would be significantly onerous, so the amendment would not result in a proportionate approach.
Amendments 100ZABB and 100ZABL would extend our approach and require all reports, with a recommendation, to set out the financial benefits and not just those going to a planning committee or the full authority for a decision. We chose to apply this measure to committee reports, as these will be published in advance and are the most accessible and transparent to local communities and therefore the most appropriate for the likely benefits to be recorded in. Applications determined at planning committees are also likely to be the larger developments, where we imagine the largest financial benefits to be. While reports for planning applications decided under delegated powers are made publicly available, our understanding is that that is generally only after a decision is taken and only where a member of the public requests the information.
Amendments 100ZABC, 100ZABE, 100ZABG, 100ZABH and 100ZABK would require local planning authorities to list the costs likely to be incurred as a result of development. The noble Lord’s amendments do not include a definition of costs. Therefore local authorities would be required to list any cost that might arise from development. As I am sure the noble Lord is aware, our intention is for minimum burdens to be placed on authorities, which these amendments would not bring. Where, for example, significant infrastructure would be needed to support a proposed new development, this would be a material consideration and therefore already covered in some detail in planning reports.
Amendment 100ZABF would extend the scope of the clause to require local planning authorities to list the financial benefits likely to be obtained by anybody as a result of the grant of a planning permission. It would significantly increase the scope of the clause. We are consulting on how we might use this power, but our intention is for it to be used sparingly.
Amendments 100ZABD, 100ZABJ and 100ZABM—which I am sure are designed to tax me at this hour of the night—would remove the Secretary of State’s power to define in regulations the financial benefits that should be listed in reports. Again, removing this flexibility would require local planning authorities to list all financial benefits, which we do not feel is a proportionate approach. I hope that, with these reassurances, the noble Lord will not press his amendments.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I am lost in admiration at the vigour and energy that the Minister still has at this time. Having said that, I am grateful for her full response and beg leave to withdraw the first amendment in the group.
“(1) Local planning authorities may make provision for the payment of fees or charges to them in respect of the performance of their functions and anything done by them which is calculated to facilitate or is conducive or incidental to the performance of their functions, and may vary such fees or charges according to the value of the project concerned or any other material concerns.(2) Fees or charges under subsection (1) may exceed the costs incurred by the local planning authority in performing functions relating to the relevant project.(3) Local planning authorities shall retain any fees or charges paid in accordance with subsection (1), and use them as they see fit.”
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, I am so glad that we are taking this amendment, after having sat here these many hours. This amendment takes us clearly to the part of the Bill that is planning, rather than housing. This is the first time I have spoken on the planning aspect of it. The amendment is self-explanatory and does not need me to talk too much about it, particularly at this time of night. But I emphasise that the case was made by my noble friend Lord True when he spoke on Amendments 101A and 101B. He made the point then that local authorities really do not have control of their own finances.
My view on planning is that it is very wrong that people doing multimillion-pound developments should be charged the same planning fee as the people who are building one small additional room onto their house. I think it right that there should be a proportionate charge according to the value of the work. This again would cover the aspect that my noble friend Lord True brought up about offices being converted to residences; it was all being done for a quick profit. If councils had been able to charge a more realistic amount, either they might have had more funds to replace whatever they were losing in terms of the office accommodation, or the incentive to do all that changeover might not have existed.
It is very important that councils have the right not only to set varying planning fees but to retain the funds. In some cases, all fees collected by the local authority are handed over to the Treasury; that would not help the councils at all. All local authorities are very strapped for cash at the moment, and it is very important that something of this type should be considered. I know that we are only in Committee, the wording on this might not be 100% and we might need to go into it in other ways, but the principle is the important thing that we should be thinking of. I consider that the two other amendments in this group follow the same line that I am taking. I beg to move.
Lord True
My Lords, I have an amendment in this group. It is a very important subject and it is a great pity that it has come up at this late hour. I quite understand why my noble friend wished to move it.
Under Article 4, for example, which is recommended on the process we were discussing earlier, you cannot charge fees in those circumstances. You cannot even charge the prior approval application fee. So in those cases, if we had not had that system, we would have been able to get fees of £380,000, whereas we actually got only £19,000 from all this work—on 234 prior approval cases. I do not want to go over all that again; it just accentuates the problem. I agree with my noble friend. I do not see why local authorities should not be permitted to recover the cost of this service.
In our authority, it costs us £1 million to provide this service. That is money that has to be cross-subsidised. So, in effect, while we are being told that we have to charge up to the level—charging old people full price for their services and so forth—developers and people who want to do extensions do not have to pay. The only people who are told that they must be subsidised are developers. It is in fact a pernicious cross-subsidy from adult social services and other key services into providing a cost on planning that is not the true cost.
This is not the occasion to have a long debate, but it is unacceptable that local authorities are not allowed to recover at least that cost—I would not be as ambitious as my noble friend. This is a matter that we must return to.
Lord Porter of Spalding
My Lords, I do not wish to drag this out any longer, but I feel the need to support this amendment given that I am the chairman of the Local Government Association and local government nationally is subsidising the planning system by about £150 million a year. As the noble Lord, Lord True, said, to make money on planning is probably a step too far, but we should certainly be in a position where councils are able to fully recover costs. I know that the previous coalition Government gave the first decent increase in planning fees for a long time, but that was a fair while ago, so it is about time someone looked at the way that we are dealing with planning permissions. I add my support to the previous two speakers to ask the Minister to make sure that when she is speaking to her colleagues this is something that is looked at.
It works in the industry’s interest to have well-resourced planning departments. It enables us to do planning permissions in a stronger, quicker way so that the industry benefits. I do not think anybody would suggest that we should make money on this, but we should certainly be able to fully recover the costs.
Lord Kerslake
I add my support to this amendment, which goes to the heart of an issue of performance and capacity in local authorities. One thing that we did as part of the London Housing Commission was to talk to developers and housebuilders. Absolutely consistently, every single one of them raised concerns about the impact of budget reductions on the capacity of planning departments. It was not simply the number of planners; it was also the fact that often senior positions had been taken out in order to save money and they would be dealing with quite junior planners who did not have the authority to take a decision. They were often temporary and then moved on just at the point that the report might be going to committee. This costs housebuilders and developers a huge amount of money. I did not find a single developer or housebuilder who was not prepared to pay more for the planning service in order to tackle this issue—not one, and I talked to literally tens if not hundreds of different people through the course of this commission.
That is an issue for London, but I believe that it goes beyond London. It has always been incomprehensible to me why we do not go with a model that says: charge the proper rate—not an excessive charge, but the proper rate—for the job that needs to be done. We have planning performance agreements, but they simply do not go to the heart of the issue, which is the ability for local authorities to reliably plan their resources based on a high level of fee income. I strongly support the amendment and hope that the Minister will seriously consider its contents.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor
My Lords, I will speak briefly because we should all be in bed already, but I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake. In the planning review that I conducted back in 2008, I specifically recommended both that planning departments should be able to charge a fee that met the costs and that they should be able to offer improved services, provided that developers met those costs. This is not about getting a better outcome for the developer by paying more; it is about getting a proper, quick delivery of services, which is in the interests of the whole community and not just those bringing forward development proposals.
It is nonsense that we see many schemes held up fundamentally because the local authorities cannot afford to deliver an adequate service. Developers are entirely frustrated by that. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake. I have spoken to many developers across the country, as well as many councils. There is no unwillingness to pay for a proper quality of service.
The one caveat that I have on this is for individual householders who may be bringing forward small-scale applications. It is of fundamental importance that the fees should remain accessible for people bringing forward a proposal for an extension of their home or whatever. I do not believe that the costs will be excessive there anyway, but if there is an area where we should worry, it is that. For any scale of development, it is a nonsense that planning departments simply cannot afford to process the applications properly and rapidly. It is not in anyone’s interest.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, the amendment in my name and those of my noble friend Lord Kennedy and the noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Foster, is very much consistent with the other amendments. However, I draw a comparison between what is being proposed here and what is happening in the legal world, where the Ministry of Justice is not just engaged in full cost recovery, but seeking in its court fees and other levies to recover more than the cost of the service. This does not go quite as far as the Government are prepared to in the justice field. For that it is all the better.
However, I wonder what the implications would be for this scheme if, as other parts of the Bill would perhaps lead to, we saw the outsourcing of the planning function, which would then potentially become a commercial activity. That might have certain difficulties when lined up with the amendment proposed here. Having said that, I certainly support the amendment and I hope that the Government will respond sympathetically to it.
Lord Foster of Bath
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, quite rightly said that all three of these amendments are related. However, there are differences. The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord True, as I understand it, merely says that there will continue to be a nationally imposed fee framework, but in which full cost recovery will be possible, whereas the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, and the amendment that my name is attached to, suggest the devolution of responsibility for fee setting to local authorities. I hope that that is the direction that the Minister will be prepared to go in.
When I was the Member of Parliament for the wonderful city of Bath, my local authority had real problems because, as a world heritage city, it had extra things to deal with, such as archaeological issues, for the very large number of properties that it had to give various forms of planning consent to—as listed buildings and so on. Of course, that also cannot be reflected in the fee structure, so, like many other councils, it had a huge deficit between the fees that it could charge and the costs it incurred.
In 2012, when the Government were carrying out the previous review of the fee structure, it participated in an exercise in which there was a very detailed analysis of every minute and hour spent by staff employed and all the other costs. It showed very clearly that it was recovering no more than 50% of its costs. That is reflected by many councils; I am sure that many noble Lords have seen the figures from London Councils, which show that they are many tens of millions of pounds adrift each year.
The problem is that if we look at this just as giving councils the ability to charge more to cover their costs, I can see the Minister looking horrified, because she wants improvements in standards to go alongside it. The interesting thing is that there is a real opportunity to combine the two. Although I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said about planning performance approaches adopted through the planning performance agreements, nevertheless they have demonstrated very clearly in the one area where local authorities can charge over and above the fee structure that they can develop some very innovative and ambitious approaches. If we give this additional power over fee-level decision-making to our local councils and local planning authorities, I believe that that will be combined with some very adventurous and innovative ways forward.
Finally, I have one simple question for the Minister. If she is not going at least to allow the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord True, with full cost recovery, I wonder how she envisages a later part of the Bill when she wants to give the opportunity for experimentation to private organisations coming into the planning operation. No commercial organisation I know is going to enter a deal where the starting base is only 50% back for any investment. It simply will not happen. I am sure that the Minister has an answer, which will be to accept the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord True or, better still, the other two amendments.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I hope that we can end on a happy note this evening. At present, any regulations that allow for different levels of fees in different local authority areas could be subject to the hybrid procedure. This would significantly lengthen the parliamentary time taken for consideration of the regulations. So the effect of Clause 141 would be that such regulations would no longer be treated as hybrid and would be subject only to the affirmative procedure that is usual for fee regulations. The clause would allow this type of local flexibility to be explored without every associated change to the fees regulations being treated as a hybrid instrument.
I know that some noble Lords had concerns that removing the hybrid process would mean that some interests would not be adequately protected. I should like to reassure them that, where such flexibility is proposed, we intend to ensure that there is appropriate consultation at local level, so that people are not disproportionately affected by the changes. We consider this to be a more direct and effective route for individuals to express their views, rather than petitioning against the instrument. There will still be full parliamentary scrutiny of any such regulations under the affirmative procedure.
My noble friend Lady Gardner made the point that it is wrong that big developers can pay the same fees as householders. That is not entirely accurate, in the sense that applicants pay varying fees on the scale of the development being pursued. It is not actually uniform at the moment.
Turning to Amendments 100ZB and 101, which relate to local authorities setting fees up to cost recovery, I should highlight that Section 303 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 already provides for the Secretary of State to allow, by regulations, local planning authorities to set their own levels of fees up to cost recovery. We are not without powers to enable local fee setting. Planning application fees make an important contribution to meeting the costs of the development management service, but they are only one side of the resourcing equation. Local government obviously has been driving down its costs too, and giving local authorities freedom to set their own fees brings unintended risks. Removing the sector’s incentive to tackle inefficiencies where they exist—particularly as local authorities are monopoly providers of planning services in their areas—and raising fees in a way that could dissuade home owners or small and medium-sized developers from undertaking developments, would introduce unpredictability for developers just when we need them to be stepping up the number of homes that they are providing. Crucially, providing no link to improved performance would give no guarantee that the additional income would go into planning departments or lead to more timely decisions.
Debate on this part of the Bill has highlighted that planning is a very important public service, with local authorities balancing the private interests of the applicant with those of the wider community. I totally understand the concern of my noble friend Lord True about the taxpayer subsidising developers but, in the context that I have just outlined, it may not be unreasonable for local taxpayers to make a contribution to the cost of this public service. Local authorities can do a lot more to transform their planning departments. Those that have introduced new ways of delivering planning services, for example through outsourcing and shared service arrangements, have shown that performance can be improved and costs reduced. More should be following their lead.
Finally, we are consulting on proposals to increase fees in line with inflation and propose to do this annually. However, changes in fees should go hand in hand with the provision of an effective service, which is why we propose to link future increases in fees to performance. Noble Lords will also be pleased to learn that we propose to enable some greater flexibility in fee-setting where local areas come forward with ambitious plans for reform, such as providing applicants with a choice of a fast-track service in return for a proportionate fee.
Lord Foster of Bath
I appreciate that the hour is late but will the Minister confirm what she has just said? She has at least implied that a local authority is likely to get the fee level increase—basically, inflation since 2012. Then she implied that there could be additional money coming forward, whereas as I read the technical consultation document, it says it the other way round: everybody will get the percentage increase but those who are deemed to be doing badly will have money taken away. So it is not a case of everybody getting up to that level and then a bit is added; rather of everybody getting basically the increase since 2012 but some is potentially taken away.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I hope that the noble Lord and I are saying the same thing. We are saying that we are enabling greater flexibility in fee setting.
Lord Foster of Bath
For clarity, is it the Minister’s understanding from the technical consultation document that under the current government thinking no local authority planning department is likely to see an increase above inflation since 2012?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Yes, it is, my Lords. I am sure we will argue this long and hard on Report.
Amendment 100ZAC, tabled by my noble friend Lady Gardner, seeks to enable local authorities to charge fees that exceed cost recovery in respect of their planning functions. The Government’s guidance on handling public funds entitled Managing Public Money states that charges and fees, like those for planning applications, should be set at cost recovery so that the Government do not profit at the expense of consumers.
Local authorities also have the power under the Local Government Act 2003 to charge for discretionary services up to the level of cost recovery. I know many local authorities have chosen to use this power to charge for pre-application advice. While limited to cost recovery, authorities must ensure that they do not make a profit from the provision of pre-application advice over the course of a year. However, I reassure my noble friend that the income generated from planning fees remains with the council. It is for local authorities to determine how these fees are used.
With one slight exception, I hope that noble Lords are satisfied with my comments and that the noble Baroness will feel happy to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, I am most grateful to everyone who has taken part in this debate, particularly as the Committee sitting was extended to enable us to discuss this amendment tonight. Having sat here for many hours, that certainly meant a great deal to me.
A matter that has not been mentioned in this debate is that of enforcement. Many councils tell me that they do not have funds to carry out enforcement in relation to planning and various other matters. That is pretty important, particularly when people construct something which contravenes their planning permission. I know of a famous television celebrity who has carried out all sorts of things for which he is now applying for retrospective permission. When Barbara Castle came to this House—I had the honour of standing against her in 1970—the first thing she did was speak to an amendment I had tabled which opposed retrospective planning permission. She did not appreciate that she was meant to ask me whether she could add her name to the amendment. However, I was not a bit worried about that because she spoke on the issue superbly and her speech was well received by the House. However, there are many aspects of planning that people would like to address but cannot do so. I have mixed views on the suggestion with regard to private enterprise in this regard. Those decisions should be taken by councils, as with many other things. I hope that the Minister will have a meeting with me or recommend changes to my amendment and that I can bring it back on Report. Ideally, if the Government brought it back that would be the best of all, but, if not, I will certainly return to it on Report because it is very important. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.